Tackle obesity stigma or risk rising social care costs

The Local Government Association has stressed that weight-related stigmas need tackling to help prevent rising levels of obesity and severe obesity from having a significant impact on demand and cost pressures in adult social care.

Up to a third of adults are predicted to be obese by 2024. The LGA says council care costs are rising as levels of obesity increase with more people living longer in ill-health with multiple and complex needs, requiring costly housing adaptations, specialised equipment and personal care.

In its new report, Social Care and Obesity, the LGA is urging doctors and health professionals to have an honest conversation about people’s weight when they consider it to be the underlying cause of a condition and for weight to be routinely recorded in data collection to help inform prevention work and ensure that services are tailored to population need.

This ‘frank approach’ has become more urgent considering that severe obesity rates have soared seven-fold for men and almost trebled for women since the mid-90s, and in light of widening health inequalities.

Research shows that the yearly cost of council funded community-based social care for a severely obese person is nearly double the cost of a person with a healthy BMI, which equates to an extra £423,000 in annual excess social care costs for a typical council. Further research shows that obese people are 25 per cent more likely to be using some form of long-term care in two years’ time, than those with a healthy BMI.

The LGA is calling on government to restore a reduction of more than £700 million in the public health grant to councils between 2015/16 and 2019/20 to help prevention efforts and increase the grant to at least £3.9 billion a year by 2024/25 so it matches the growth in overall NHS funding, as part of the NHS Long-Term Plan.

Ian Hudspeth, chairman of the LGA’s Community Wellbeing Board, said: “Obesity is a ticking timebomb for the nation’s health and is one of the most serious public health challenges of the 21st century, but its impact on adult social care is largely overlooked. Unless we tackle the stigma and serious challenge of obesity, the costly and debilitating major health conditions it causes could bankrupt adult social care and NHS services.

“Health professionals need to start having frank conversations about their people’s weight if it could be an underlying cause of their condition and routinely record it; individuals need to take responsibility for their own decisions and government needs to support them to do so. Obesity needs to be tackled head-on, otherwise people’s health will continue to suffer, health inequalities associated with obesity will remain and the economic and social costs will increase to unsustainable levels.”