Association of British Clinical Diabetologists

Registered Charitable Trust No. 1074191

Alliance of societies interested in obesity

Ketan Dhatariya (Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital) represents ABCD on a new joint committee made up of various ‘learned societies’ addressing obesity. This group met in March and November 2006.

The group is chaired by Steve Bloom, but it is likely that this will change. The group is made up of representatives from the following:

Association for the Study of Obesity
ABCD
British Cardiac Society
British Heart Foundation
British Hypertension Society
British Pharmacological Society
British Society for Paediatric Endocrinology and Diabetes
Cancer Research UK
Diabetes UK
International Obesity Task Force
Nutrition Society
Society for Endocrinology

Others who are felt to be important and who have been / will be invited to join are Wellcome Trust, MRC, British Dietetics Association, British Association of Child and Community Health, RCOG, Faculty of Public Health, British Psychological Society

The stated aims of the group are several fold and include (in no particular order)

- To help resource individual groups in raising money for obesity research
- To comment of government documents regarding obesity (e.g. the NICE guideline due for launch on the 13th of December)
- To allow sharing of information between member societies. An example of this would be to put together a calendar of events every 3 months or so and send this around. If anything that ABCD was due to do in the next quarter was to involve obesity, then this would be shared, so that interested parties from other learned societies may be able to attend – or even provide speakers should this be appropriate or necessary.

The group has produced a summary document which arose as a result of a questionnaire sent in 2006 to all represented societies asking ‘what 5 things to we know about obesity’ and ‘what 5 things do we not know about obesity’. There is also a contacts list and 2007 plan.

The group has yet to think of an appropriate name, but we are thinking of a catchy name that includes the words ‘learned societies’, ‘alliance’, ‘joint’, ‘obesity’, ‘national’, and ‘research’.