Weighing it up: Obesity in Australia

Recommendations 3 and 20

Page last updated: 05 May 2013

The Committee recommends that the Minister for Health and Ageing work with state, territory and local governments through the Australian Health Ministers’ Advisory Council to develop and implement long-term, effective, well-targeted social marketing and education campaigns about obesity and healthy lifestyles, and ensure that these marketing campaigns are made more successful by linking them to broader policy responses to obesity.

The Committee recommends that the Minister for Health and Ageing explore ways to enhance the How do you measure up? campaign website and further develop it as a central repository of information about the benefits of healthy eating and exercise.

Agreed.

Following on the success of the Measure Up social marketing campaign in raising awareness of the health risks of overweight and obesity, the Australian Government has funded a new phase of the campaign focusing on how people can make lifestyle changes to improve their health. The Swap It, Don’t Stop It campaign was launched in March 2011 to encourage Australians to swap big for small (portion control); swap often for sometimes (occasional treats); swap fried for fresh (nutritional quality); swap sitting for moving (physical activity); and swap watching for playing (physical activity).

Three bursts of national Swap It, Don’t Stop It campaign activity were implemented to 30 June 2012 across a broad range of media and platforms. A total of $18 million has been provided to the states and territories as part of the National Partnership Agreement on Preventive Health to complement national social marketing efforts by providing reinforcing local activities.

As part of its role in providing national leadership on the Australian Government’s social marketing programs for preventive health, the Australian National Preventive Health Agency is working towards the implementation of a third phase of Measure Up from 2013. The initiative will build on existing infrastructure, resources and online tools to provide a long term framework through which to initiate, drive and sustain coordinated obesity prevention social marketing efforts across Australia. The active promotion of partnerships, including between the Commonwealth, state and territory governments, non-government organisations and primary care providers to disseminate information and support healthy lifestyle choices will be a feature of the initiative.

Further information about weight management and healthy lifestyles will be made available through a new national Healthy Weight Guide. The focus of the Guide will be on supporting people in the community to achieve or maintain a healthy weight. A feature of the Guide is the involvement of consumers, health professionals, and experts in obesity, nutrition, physical activity and health promotion in its development.

The development of the evidence base for the Guide will draw upon the recent reviews of the Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Management of Overweight and Obesity and the Australian Dietary Guidelines. The research underpinning the Guide and the new Guidelines will also be used to provide the evidence base for other national obesity prevention interventions.

The Healthy Weight Guide is expected to be launched in the first half of 2013. The Guide will be made available through a Healthy Weight website, which will be the key mechanism to provide advice and interactive tools for consumers, and will link to other websites, including appropriate resources on state and territory and non-government organisations’ websites. There will also be printed materials available.