Dr Raheelah Ahmad of Imperial College and the Royal Society for Public Health recently published a paper on the UK's childhood obesity epidemic.

The RSPH is calling for reform of the letter parents receive as part of the national childhood measurement programme which weighs and measures primary school children – sometimes known as the ‘fat letter’.

Speaking on Good Morning Britain Dr Ahmad said that some councils do not provide adequate support to parents receiving the letter. She suggested that there should be better signposting to allow parents to access services which can help them to tackle their child’s weight in a sensitive way.

New research by RSPH among parents of children aged 18 or under has found only half are aware of the NCMP (49%) or understand its purpose (51%), and just one in five (20%) have received information as a result of the programme that has been useful in helping their child achieve a healthy weight. RSPH believes the scheme needs reform to tackle parental confusion around its purpose, improve the way information is communicated to parents, and provide additional support. Steps to address this would include:

• Support in the form of either healthy food vouchers or access to after school activity clubs to incentivise better dietary and exercise habits for young people
• Better integration of the programme with other initiatives such as Change4Life and inclusion of useful guides on diet and exercise with the information that is sent
• Ensuring parents of children who are obese are contacted by telephone prior to receipt of the letter.

As well as reform of the “fat letter”, RSPH is calling for a host of other measures in a comprehensive package aimed at preventing childhood obesity, including:

• Restrictions on junk food advertising on social media and online – this would feed into the Advertising Standards Authority consultation on the issue next year
• Introduction of a minimum hour a day of ‘fun and play’ in primary schools to increase activity levels
• Working with the food industry to encourage reformulation of their products and to introduce a ‘sugar tax’ on high sugar content soft drinks
• Improved training for health practitioners and other workers to offer advice during pregnancy and early years

Dr Ahmad leads the Creating Healthy Active Local Kids (CHALK) project which provides training for health practitioners and schools on tackling obesity in primary schools. The programme has already been run successfully in Lambeth and is now available to councils across the UK. For more information please email chalk@ic.ac.uk.