Young man at the doctors
© World Obesity Federation

The WA Primary Health Alliance GP Healthy Weight project aims to offer solutions to General Practices wanting to support patients to be their healthiest.

The Healthy Weight GP Project aims to improve the number and capability of general practices engaging in weight management quality improvement activities and delivering weight management assessment and intervention services for patients aged between 18 and 65 located within Western Australia.

As the gateway to primary care, general practice is well placed to identify and manage overweight and obesity in WA, however many barriers exist. This project will explore barriers and enablers of supporting patients to achieve and maintain a healthy weight. This will inform a suite of tools, resources and education aimed at primary care clinicians to facilitate the early intervention and management of those living in larger bodies. The tools will be housed on a central electronic repository, which will act as a ‘hub’ for weight management in WA primary care.

The project aims to deliver 5 key actions:

  1. To identify the barriers and enablers to patient weight management in West Australian general practice
  2. To identify evidenced based, best practice tools, resources and education currently available to support WA general practices in managing patient weight
  3. To identify crossover, duplication and collaboration and co-design opportunities with key stakeholders of the WA Healthy Weight Action Plan for support, tools and resources for weight management across the WA health system
  4. To select and develop tools, resources and education to assist general practice in the routine collection and recording, and management of patient weight
  5. To establish a sustainable repository of resources and tools and processes to support WA metropolitan general practices in patient weight management into WAPHA business as usual
  6. Empower the community to take action