Prof Iain Broom sharing weight management program

Posted 25 March 2014

In February-March, The Centre for Obesity Management and Prevention Research Excellence in Primary Health Care (COMPaRE-PHC) hosted a visit from Professor Iain Broom, who is Director of the Centre for Obesity Research and Epidemiology (CORE) at Robert Gordon University. He is also Medical Director of LighterLife, holds a Professorial Research Fellowship at the Rowett Research Centre and is a founding European SCOPE Fellow. Professor Broom has been responsible, along with several UK colleagues, for the development of the Counterweight program of which he is Chairman. 

During his visit, Professor Broom presented seminars and master classes at UNSW Australia, the University of Sydney and the University of Adelaide; contributed to policy roundtables with the Australian Government Department of Health & Aging and with the NSW Health Ministry; and attended meetings with various individuals and groups including the CSIRO, the organisation that developed the Total Wellbeing Diet.

His visit prompted useful discussion from his experience in not only developing and evaluating the Counterweight weight loss program, but implementing it across health care systems in the UK and Canada. Counterweight is one of the few weight loss programs that have been successfully rolled out across a health system after research. The Counterweight Program has been commissioned by over 30 Primary Care Trusts and directly by the Scottish Government to implement Counterweight in 13 out of their 14 Health Boards as the weight management program of choice. He also left the COMPaRE-PHC investigators and his audiences with food for thought (excuse the pun) in his discussions about the latest Nordic Nutrition Recommendations, which recommend higher fat content that the Australian Dietary Guidelines. 

For seminars, master classes and policy roundtables presented by Professor Broom, please visit COMPaRE-PHC website.