Perhaps the most striking economic finding came from the More Than Weight report, winner of the Association for the Study of Obesity Best Practice Award. The independent mixed-methods study, combining online focus groups, surveys of 119 individuals and insights from 190 health professionals, estimated that obesity costs the West Yorkshire and Humber and North Yorkshire regions more than £6.1 billion annually when direct NHS treatment, productivity losses, adult social care and broader economic impacts are counted. Beyond the balance sheet, the report documented high levels of social isolation, frequent emotional eating, elevated rates of mental health and neurodivergent conditions, and a pervasive sense among participants of being misunderstood by healthcare professionals. Its authors called for a paradigm shift from blame to belonging, recommending compassion-led, trauma-informed and person-centred care alongside anti-stigma training and co-production with lived experience.

The congress devoted an entire symposium to England’s Complications of Excess Weight clinics, the specialist paediatric services commissioned under the NHS Long Term Plan for children and young people with severe obesity, defined as a body mass index above the 99.6th centile. The national ENHANCE evaluation, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research, presented early effectiveness data from a matched observational cohort of 4,550 children attending CEW clinics compared with 3,517 eligible children who could not access them. The treatment effect grew steadily over follow-up: participants in the clinics showed progressively larger reductions in body mass index relative to matched controls, reaching a difference of 3.22 kg/m² by 24 months. Researchers cautioned, however, that long-term cost-effectiveness remains sensitive to assumptions about weight regain after discharge.

Service mapping presented at the meeting revealed the scale and heterogeneity of the CEW programme, which grew from 21 pilot services to 30 across England. Using a standardised reporting template, the team found that clinics supported children aged 2 to 17, with eligibility thresholds varying from 2.5 to 4.5 standard deviation units above the mean. Waiting lists reached 200 young people in some areas, and most services combined a specialist obesity consultant, nurse, psychologist, dietitian, physiotherapist and administrator, delivering care over 12 to 24 months and managing complications from polycystic ovarian syndrome to type 2 diabetes. Survey and interview data from 250 families suggested the clinics were working across every level of the socioecological model, intervening in schools, supporting parents and adapting to diverse needs within a chronically underserved population.

GLP-1 receptor agonists dominated the clinical sessions, but the evidence presented was notably more nuanced than the public narrative of effortless weight loss. A qualitative study from the University of Oxford interviewing people using these medicines through NHS routes found patients often had to actively advocate for access, struggled with generic wrap-around care, and reported deep uncertainty about stopping treatment, with weight regain a common fear. Some participants had moved between NHS and private prescribing, creating what researchers described as additional financial, informational and care coordination challenges. Meanwhile, a systematic review and meta-analysis of 21 studies in patients with advanced and end-stage kidney disease found GLP-1-based therapy produced a mean weight loss of 3.95 kilograms, roughly 3.9 percent, with no severe hypoglycaemia, but discontinuation rates of 21 to 37 percent, far higher than in trials of patients without kidney disease.

Concerns about muscle health also emerged. Incretin-based therapies reduce not only adipose tissue but skeletal muscle mass, potentially raising the risk of sarcopenia in a population already vulnerable to sarcopenic obesity. A co-designed project presented at the three-minute early career competition described how a patient and public involvement group of eight members highlighted limited awareness of muscle loss and insisted that any screening toolkit, whether using SARC-F, grip strength or timed up-and-go tests, must be sensitive to stigma, shame and prior negative healthcare experiences. The researchers argued that education for both patients and professionals is essential, particularly for those who lose access to clinical support after initial treatment.

Real-world data from digital providers offered some of the largest numbers ever presented at the congress. A retrospective analysis of 196,056 adults prescribed semaglutide or tirzepatide through a UK digital weight management service found that engaged participants achieved equivalent weight loss regardless of socioeconomic deprivation, with those in the most deprived quintile losing 22.4 percent at 12 months compared with 21.9 percent in the least deprived. Engagement itself, however, was lower in deprived areas, and completion rates were 1.7-fold higher among the least deprived, suggesting digital services can deliver equity when people participate but may need targeted strategies to boost uptake. A separate microsimulation of 10,000 people per arm concluded that a digitally supported tirzepatide pathway was cost-effective at £21,555 per quality-adjusted life year from a societal perspective, with annual sick days falling from 9.0 to 6.5.

Maternal and reproductive health formed another major thread. The SHAPES cohort of 1,411 pregnant women demonstrated that the conventional threshold of body mass index at or above 30 performed poorly for predicting gestational diabetes, achieving an area under the curve of just 0.627, while measures such as relative fat mass and waist-to-height ratio exceeded 0.7. An international individual participant data meta-analysis drawing on 25 datasets from 16 countries and 41,954 pregnancies is now validating these models externally. Separately, a survey of 335 women considering or using injectable obesity medications found only 45.9 percent had received contraceptive advice, with inconsistent guidance on how long to wait after stopping treatment before trying to conceive, and eight respondents reported conceiving while using the medication.

Stigma ran through the meeting like a fault line. A qualitative meta-synthesis of 86 studies involving 2,762 people concluded that weight stigma acts as a substantial barrier to physical health behaviours, operating through internalisation, judgement from parents, clinicians and teachers, and even the design of chairs and medical equipment. Experimental studies found student midwives and dentists held more stigmatising attitudes toward patients with overweight, and were more likely to offer unsolicited lifestyle advice. Researchers studying minority communities reported a compounding effect, with participants describing simultaneous weight-based and identity-based discrimination, and one noting they did not see people who looked like them in research or healthcare settings.

The congress closed its scientific programme with reminders that obesity is a global and systemic problem. A study from Kiribati used cultural consensus analysis to show that imported rice and processed foods are displacing traditional staples, with heavy reliance on imported foods linked to households spending over 75 percent of income on food, yet fish, breadfruit and coconut remain culturally salient focal points for prevention. From dark kitchens evading local authority monitoring to whole-systems approaches spanning five nations, the collective message from Sheffield was clear: the GLP-1 era has raised the stakes, but the determinants of obesity remain embedded in food systems, inequality and stigma, and no injection will dissolve them on its own.

Subject of Research: Clinical, behavioural and health services research on obesity prevention and treatment presented at the 11th UK Congress on Obesity

Article Title: Abstracts from the 11th UK Congress on Obesity (UKCO)

Article References: Beaumont, J. D. (2026). Abstracts from the 11th UK Congress on Obesity (UKCO). International Journal of Obesity. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41366-026-02216-x

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1038/s41366-026-02216-x

Keywords: obesity, GLP-1 receptor agonists, semaglutide, tirzepatide, weight management, childhood obesity, weight stigma, Complications of Excess Weight clinics, gestational diabetes, digital health, health inequalities, UKCO 2026