Guidance
This guideline covers identifying, assessing and managing obesity in children (aged 2 years and over), young people and adults.
In July 2023, we reviewed the evidence on bariatric surgery for people living with overweight and obesity and updated the recommendations on surgical interventions.
NICE has also produced guidelines on obesity prevention, maintaining a healthy weight, and managing overweight and obesity in adults and in children and young people.
Recommendations
This guideline includes recommendations on:
- principles of care
- identifying and assessing overweight, obesity and central adiposity
- assessment
- lifestyle, behavioural, dietary and pharmacological interventions
- physical activity
- bariatric surgery, including when to offer expedited assessment and follow-up care
Who is it for?
- Healthcare professionals
- Commissioners and providers
- People who are living with obesity and their families and carers
Is this guideline up to date?
We are updating our suite of guidelines on weight management. See the guideline in development page for progress on the update.
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
This guideline replaces NICE guideline PH46 (July 2013) and updates and replaces section 1.2 of NICE guideline CG43 (December 2006).
This guideline was previously called obesity: identification, assessment and management of overweight and obesity in children, young people and adults.
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals and practitioners are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or the people using their service. It is not mandatory to apply the recommendations, and the guideline does not override the responsibility to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual, in consultation with them and their families and carers or guardian.
All problems (adverse events) related to a medicine or medical device used for treatment or in a procedure should be reported to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency using the Yellow Card Scheme.
Local commissioners and providers of healthcare have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual professionals and people using services wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with complying with those duties.
Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.