Highlights from a milestone season

10 July 2025
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It has been a meaningful experience leading the team and working with partners at Obesity Action Scotland (OAS). We were keen to build on the foundations built over the past 9 years.

Three distinct strategies have come to be the hallmark of my time with the organisation:
• Embedding a focus on inequalities in all our work
• Engagement of non-health sectors relevant to the food and diet response
• Recognition of commercial drivers that impact progress.

I cherish tilling new ground, and there were a handful of firsts that we embarked on as a team  — beginning with building the business plan; a parliamentary reception; an in-house focus group research project; campaigning to make a global event —the Commonwealth Games — family friendly; the first Scottish Obesity Alliance (SOA) factsheet with a focus on inequalities; and a joint conference with the Alliance with significant non-health sector engagement.

Having a multi-skilled team has been pivotal. Over a brief period, this has led to outcomes equipping OAS to step confidently into its second decade of influencing the Scottish Obesity landscape:

  • new resources on obesity-related inequalities and productivity
  • new government sectors and development charities to work with
  • expanded reach to food system stakeholders sub nationally
  • a widely supported call to action on industry interference in food governance
  • profile-raising of obesity and OAS with policy makers

Partnership has been a central pillar of all that we did during this time. In addition to our allies at the Scottish Obesity Alliance and NCD Alliance Scotland, we strengthened our work with the Scottish Food Coalition, Public Health Nutrition Interest Group and the World Obesity Federation. I am thankful for their support.

It has been particularly delightful to see our collective work contributing to three policy breakthroughs that have been long awaited: the top priority afforded to obesity prevention in the 10-year Population Health Framework, the first set of restrictions on some forms of promotions of unhealthy food and the national plans under the Good Food Nation Act.

OAS is in a good position to engage stakeholders in contributing to steering a food system transformation. I am confident that OAS will continue to make a difference in these areas.

I will continue to support that action and contribute to food governance in Scotland as part of my broader work in global health governance.

 

Dr Shoba John, Head of Obesity Action Scotland