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COPYRIGHT 2008 Haymarket Business Publications Ltd.
After being rolled-out in England and Wales, Counterweight has been adopted in Scotland, writes Julie Griffiths.
Many a diet is started in January, but this year an entire nation made a resolution to lose weight. Or at least the Scottish government made it on its residents' behalf when it announced that it would roll out the weight-loss programme Counterweight.
There is no doubt that Scotland needs to address its weight problem With an estimated 26 per cent of women and 22.4 per cent of men overweight, Scotland is second only to the US in levels of obesity.
And it is no surprise that ministers have opted to implement Counterweight, an NHS-run initiative that has gained enormous momentum since Independent Nurse1 last covered the programme three years ago.
The scheme, which is the only fully evaluated, evidence-based primary care weight management programme in the UK, was developed and evaluated in 80 general practices across the UK between 2000 and 2005. It has been under way in three Scottish health board regions - Lanarkshire, Lothian and Tayside - since April 2006 and is now starting in Ayrshire, Arran, Aberdeen and Fife.
Professor Iain Broom, chair of the Counterweight board, puts the efficacy of the programme down to the level of support given to both the patients and the healthcare professionals - usually practice nurses - who deliver the programme.
The nurses undergo eight hours of training by weight management advisers (WMAs) who are dieticians with a specialist interest in obesity. Training covers...
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