Overweight and obesity management

  • Quality standard
  • QS212
  • Published: 

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Quality statement 7: Advice and support after stopping medicines for weight management or completing behavioural interventions

Quality statement

People who are stopping medicines for weight management or have completed a behavioural overweight and obesity management intervention are given advice for maintaining changes and support for improving their health and wellbeing. [new 2025]

Rationale

Advice and support for maintaining weight after stopping medicines for weight management or completing a behaviour change intervention can help to prevent weight regain and weight cycling. It can also help people to maintain changes and enable them to experience long-term benefits.

Quality measures

The following measures can be used to assess the quality of care or service provision specified in the statement. They are examples of how the statement can be measured, and can be adapted and used flexibly.

Process

a) Proportion of people who have stopped taking medicines for weight management and been given advice for maintaining changes and support for improving their health and wellbeing.

Numerator – the number in the denominator given advice for maintaining changes and support for improving their health and wellbeing.

Denominator – the number of people who have stopped taking medicines for weight management.

Data source: Data can be collected from information recorded locally by healthcare professionals and provider organisations, for example from behavioural overweight and obesity management service records.

b) Proportion of people who have completed a behavioural overweight and obesity management intervention and been given advice for maintaining changes and support for improving their health and wellbeing.

Numerator – the number in the denominator given advice for maintaining changes and support for improving their health and wellbeing.

Denominator – the number of people who have completed a behavioural overweight and obesity management intervention.

Data source: Data can be collected from information recorded locally by healthcare professionals and provider organisations, for example from behavioural overweight and obesity management service records.

What the quality statement means for different audiences

Service providers (specialist overweight and obesity management services, primary care) ensure that they have protocols in place for providing advice for maintaining changes and support for improving health and wellbeing at the end of prescribing or as part of discharge from the service. They should be embedded in care planning protocols, training and templates.

Healthcare professionals (dietitians, nutritionists, behavioural overweight and obesity management specialists, GPs) ensure that they deliver advice for maintaining changes and support for improving health and wellbeing at the end of prescribing or as part of discharge from the service and care planning.

Commissioners ensure that they commission services that provide advice for maintaining changes and support for improving health and wellbeing, and that there are established pathways into ongoing support for people stopping medicines for weight management or completing behavioural change interventions.

People living with overweight, obesity or central adiposity stop taking weight management medication or leave weight management services with advice about how they can maintain their weight and know where to find support.

Source guidance

Definitions of terms used in this quality statement

Advice for maintaining changes and support for improving their health and wellbeing

Ensuring that people stopping medicines for weight management or leaving behavioural weight management services after completing a behavioural overweight and obesity management intervention:

  • receive feedback and monitoring at regular intervals for a minimum of 1 year so they can get help if they are not maintaining changes

  • have well-rehearsed action plans (such as 'if–then' plans) that they can easily put into practice if they are not maintaining changes

  • have thought about how they can make changes to their own immediate physical environment to prevent weight regain

  • have the social support they need to maintain changes

  • are helped to develop routines that support the new behaviour (note that small, manageable changes to daily routine are most likely to be maintained)

  • are offered a range of options for follow-up sessions after an intervention active phase has been completed, including at different times and in easily accessible and suitable venues.

And ensuring that weight management interventions encourage people to make lifelong behavioural changes and prevent future weight gain, by:

  • fostering independence and self-management (including self-monitoring)

  • encouraging dietary behaviours that support weight maintenance and can be sustained in the long term (for example, emphasise that national programmes promoting healthy eating like NHS Better Health can support overweight and obesity management)

  • emphasising the wider benefits of keeping up levels of physical activity over the long term

  • discussing strategies to overcome any difficulties in maintaining behavioural changes

  • encouraging family-based changes

  • discussing sources of ongoing support once the intervention or referral period has ended (opportunities could include the programme itself, online resources or support groups, other local services or activities, and help from family or friends).

[Adapted from NICE's guideline on behaviour change: individual approaches, recommendation 10 and NICE's guideline on overweight and obesity management, recommendations 1.14.32 and 1.19.6]