Why Weight? Pledge for creating Healthier places Together

The Why Weight? Pledge has been developed by partners of Healthier Together Integrated Care System (ICS) as a commitment to an environment where everyone in Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire has the access and ability to eat well, feel well and be active.

Being healthy is largely to do with environmental factors such as access to healthy food, good education, green space, and financial stability. For example, living in areas with limited access to healthy options can make it harder to maintain good health and increases the risk of diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and certain cancers.

What does the pledge achieve?

We are committed to creating environments where people can be healthy through addressing the wider determinants of healthy weight.

The pledge provides a framework for a whole-system approach to the creation of healthier places and seeks to reduce health inequalities linked to obesity. Our key focus is improving health in all communities, through:

  • connecting and collaborating with other partners,
  • communicating in a considerate manner with staff, patients and service users,
  • creating healthier places,
  • working alongside communities,
  • and continuing to develop and learn.

The 10 commitments set out in this Pledge are to be considered as a high-level set of principles that can be embodied by all health, local authority, and voluntary and community sector partner organisations in our area. Actions are to be developed by organisations who sign the Pledge that meet these commitments, and may vary across different parts of the system, depending on resource and capacity.

How does the Why Weight? Pledge support other action within Healthier Together?

The Why Weight? Pledge supports action to deliver on the five opportunities identified within our Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire ICS System Strategy:

  • Tackle inequalities
  • Strengthen the building blocks of good health and wellbeing
  • Prevent illness and treat people earlier
  • Work alongside communities to support healthy behaviours
  • Manage conditions better once people are ill

The Pledge

Why Weight? Pledge for Creating Healthier places together

As a signatory organisation we commit to implement the Pledge as part of a systems-wide approach to building a healthy weight environment;

We acknowledge that:

  • There is a need for a sensitive, multi-faceted approach that encompasses all of the wider social, environmental and economic factors that have a big impact on health.
  • Living with obesity is often stigmatised due to oversimplified views that place the responsibility solely on individuals, ignoring the wider factors that shape our lives and impact on health.
  • We need to challenge ideas that obesity is solely due to unhealthy eating and inactivity. The causes of obesity are complex and multifaceted, involving a range of factors that cannot be addressed through a single intervention.
  • We need to engage children, young people, and their families, adults and older adults and recognise that supportive environments are needed for healthy development.
  • People living in our most deprived areas have less access to the conditions needed to lead a healthy life, with ethnic minority groups disproportionately affected. This drives higher rates of obesity and widens health inequalities, so we will prioritise work that addresses these disparities.

We commit to:

Connecting and collaborating

1. Ensure there is strategic leadership to drive the commitments across organisations, identify connections, and integrate actions with other programmes and strategies.

2. Involve workplaces, social enterprises and other organisations in the implementation of action to create an environment where everyone has the access and ability to eat well, feel well and be active.
Considerate communication

3. Recognise and take action to reduce the negative impact of weight stigma on both physical and mental health.

4. Support and champion workforce development by enhancing staff knowledge of the links between weight and health, weight stigma, and trauma-informed approaches, including appropriate communication.

5. Clearly communicate how small changes in improving nutrition and moving more can have significant health gains and a positive impact on physical and mental health and wellbeing.
Creating healthier places

6. Support and improve the food and drink environments under our control or influence, ensuring food and drink available is healthy, affordable and sustainable.

7. Take action to create environments that support and enable people to move more and be more active.
Community led

8. Engage and support communities to improve access to nutritious, affordable and culturally appropriate food.

9. Involve local communities in designing and implementing programmes that create environments to support good health.
Continue to learn

10. Adopt an outcomes-focused approach by agreeing on metrics that are meaningful to our organisations and the people we serve. Monitor and evaluate work, sharing successes and challenges to foster learning and spread best practices throughout the system.

What can you do?

Please get in touch if you have any questions or would like to access our support pack.

The support pack includes a guide to implementation including an internal comms toolkit and step by step guide for adoption, as well as a monitoring tool to benchmark current work that contributes to this field and identifies gaps for future actions.

Complete our e-learning module around the social determinants of health and weight stigma

Sign the Pledge

As it stands, the Pledge should be signed by the Healthier Together Partner organisations across Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire in the initial implementation phase.

We aim to engage wider partners with the Pledge in the future. If you’re interested in signing but are not part of the Healthier Together partnership, please contact us via email at publichealthsouthgloucestershire@southglos.gov.uk

Once the Pledge has been endorsed and signed internally, a digital record of this should be added below.

Why Weight? Pledge for creating Healthier places Together
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Please list three key actions you will be taking forward within your organisation/strategic group and/or board. These actions might describe work that you are already doing which you are committing to continue, or that you are looking to develop over the 12 months from 1 September 2025. Actions may vary across different parts of the system, depending on resource, capacity and how far along you are in your journey

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