Obesity policy is being evaluated across five sectors—retail, environment, transport, education, and workplace—to determine which interventions deliver the best value for money. Standard health-sector economic methods fail to capture costs and benefits in these non-health settings, leaving policymakers without evidence to allocate scarce resources efficiently and equitably. This research programme develops new economic tools to fill that gap, co-produced with decision-makers and people living with obesity. If successful, it will provide concrete evidence on the cost-effectiveness of interventions such as park refurbishment, school food standards, active travel policies, and retail voucher schemes. These findings could reshape how public money is spent on obesity prevention, shifting investment toward measures that work across the systems that shape diet and physical activity—from green spaces and transport networks to school meals and job training. The result would be a transparent, evidence-based framework for multi-sector policy, helping local and national governments justify spending on prevention rather than treatment alone.
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Background Obesity is caused by largely preventable risk factors linked to unhealthy diets and physical inactivity. Increasingly, calls have been made for system-wide action with an emphasis on prevention recognizing the multiple determinants of the disease. Policy makers working across different sectors need to allocate scarce resources in a manner that meets efficiency and equity goals. Providing evidence on value-for-money is methodologically challenging as established economic methods that work well within the health sector do not translate well to non-health settings - settings that are crucial for obesity prevention. It is essential that more evidence is generated on (i) knowing which interventions are best value-for-money in terms of obesity prevention and (ii) ensuring that all costs and benefits are properly captured so that an appropriate case can be made for obesity prevention based on evidence. Aims and Objectives This application sets out a research programme for developing methods designed to capture the societal costs and consequences of obesity policy working across five sectors - retail, environment, transport, education and workplace. It is methodologically rigorous, timely and co-produced with decision-makers and people living with obesity; ensuring that the research has maximum impact. Objectives Each work stream is designed to address different but related determinants of obesity: Environmental: to estimate the cost-effectiveness of interventions that alter local green space. Economic: to measure the value of interventions designed to improve the essential lifestyle skills of young people to improve their chances of sustainable employment. Education: to generate economic evidence on the impact of the national school food standards. Retail: to embed economic evaluation into retail policy; to develop data collection that tracks retail spending; and to use economic insight to shape a food-economy. Transport: to estimate the cost-effectiveness of local active travel policy. Working across these five workstreams we will establish a world-leading Centre for the Economics of Obesity that will deliver high-quality research, liaising closely with policy partners and PPI-members co-producing research. Methods Workstream 1 uses a natural experiment to measure the cost-effectiveness of park refurbishment, capturing health, wellbeing and capability benefits within an economic framework. Workstream 2 addresses the economic determinants of obesity by measuring the value from embedding health and wellbeing training into early-career training schemes. Workstream 3 will apply modelling to extrapolate the costs and benefits associated with the national school food standards. Workstream 4 will map out how economics can shape the retail food economy and understand how vouchers can be designed to promote healthy purchasing behaviour. Workstream 5 uses economic models to estimate the cost-effectiveness of active travel policy incorporating both morbidity and mortality effects. Outputs My ambition is to build on my existing research programme to develop a coherent, comprehensive research programme that will develop economic methods that can be applied to multi-sector policy and reduce population obesity. I will use this award to establish a strong team of researchers and to contribute to their career development. This award will enable me to become a senior leader and an international expert in the economics of obesity.
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