Find answers to your burning questions about The WELL Collaborative

Working in the space

  • The lived experience of people impacted by overweight and obesity is essential to making any changes to improve the health and wellbeing of our community. Hearing the stories of people with lived experience helps professionals in the space understand the personal cost of obesity and broadens our ideas of what could help to change the health and wellbeing of people in WA. In addition, no two people have the same experience of weight. It is important that we hear diverse stories from lots of different people to understand the how overweight and obesity impacts people in a myriad of different ways. You can find out more about this here – Heterogeneity in Obesity: Genetic Basis and Metabolic Consequences

    For more information on how important lived experience is to The WELL Collaborative and our efforts to make social change, visit Our ‘Why’ page.

    Read consumer stories
  • Weight stigma is “the social rejection and devaluation that accrues to those who do not comply with prevailing social norms of adequate body weight and shape”. People living in larger bodies are often faced with pervasive stigmatisation and discrimination because of their weight. They experience weight stigma from family, friends, co-workers and even health professionals.

    Find out more about weight stigma

General enquiries

  • Obesity is a chronic relapsing disease and can only be diagnosed by a health professional. We recommend visiting your GP to begin the discussion about being effectively assessed and diagnosed.

  • We refer to Mappa and the Obesity Activity Map which both list health services by area. Both of these are constantly being updated and rely on service providers being proactive in listing their programs and services on these directories. Visit the Consumer page for links to these directories.

    For Consumers
  • We want to make sure that the programs and services we link to on this website are evidence based, non-stigmatising, accessible to all (including financially accessible), and effective. This is because we want people to have confidence in the services we promote and also make sure they are restrictive because of cost. At the moment, we are only listing free programs that are available to Western Australians and funded by WA Health because they have gone through a thorough procurement process. In the future we are hoping to develop a process of reviewing programs and services to ensure they fit with the above criteria. Once we have this we will be able to list more programs and services.

  • Our resources page has many resources related to overweight and obesity. It includes information for practitioners and consumers. Resources range from education and training, Australian Government Documents, reports, handouts and guides, position statements, and links to relevant organisations both nationally and internationally. We update and add to our resources regularly.

    If you are looking for the latest academic research evidence on overweight and obesity, we recommend visiting the Obesity Evidence Hub.

    Search our Resources
  • If you have a great resource you think needs to be on our website, send us an email, we’d really like to take a look at it.

    Contact us
  • We include resources that are evidence based and have been developed by reputable professional bodies and government organisations, where those resources align to the principles and values of The WELL Collaborative. We do not include research papers because the Obesity Evidence Hub contains a thorough collection of the latest research in this space which is reviewed for research quality and accuracy by a dedicated group of experts.

Getting involved

  • That’s great that you want to be involved! There are many ways you can get involved that fit with your time and interest. Come and have a chat with us and we can connect you with the information or people you need.

    Contact us
  • Absolutely! We would love to hear ideas from all over the place to help us build better health for Western Australians. And you can definitely help with that. We also connect with the national Obesity Collective so your contribution is helping across Australia.

    Contact us

The WELL Collaborative

  • We wanted to show that every health journey is different based on the unique social, cultural, and historically impacted circumstances that each person exists within. The coloured lines in our brand show this unique journey; there isn’t one path to health. The Weight Education and Lifestyle Leadership Collaborative (The WELL Collaborative) is all about building knowledge, skills, and collaboration so that all health journeys can be supported.

  • The WELL Collaborative is currently supported by staff from each of the three Steward organisations: Health Consumers’ Council, WA Primary Health Alliance, and the Department of Health. We have a Leadership Group which determines the overall strategic direction and priorities for The WELL Collaborative, and a Steering Committee who manage and deliver the day-to-day work.

  • The WELL Collaborative was established in November 2021. However, it is the culmination of years of partnerships and collaboration that began in 2018 with the development of the WA Healthy Weight Action Plan 2019-2024.

    Find out more about Our Story
  • The images we use have come from the Department of Health photo library and the Weight Issues Network (WIN) Respectful Image Library. The WIN library has been developed to provide organisations with free access to non-stigmatising and empowering images of people living in larger bodies. All images are used in accordance with the WIN Image Library terms and conditions. If you would like to access the Image Library, visit the Weight Issues Network website on the link below.