The Essex areas with the highest rates of childhood obesity

The worst areas in Essex for childhood obesity have been named, as the county looks to another country for tips on how to tackle the issue. Essex is looking to learn lessons from Amsterdam to reduce obesity problems - including in young children - of which almost a third in year 6 are classified as overweight or obese. The provenance of obesity in year 6 children has gone up to 32.6 per cent in 23/24 from 31.4 per cent in 18/19.

Adrián Coggins - head of wellbeing and public health at Essex County Council said lessons can be learnt from Amsterdam which has seen childhood obesity levels reduce through healthy food and drink, exercise and better quality sleep. The long-term approach is designed to factor into every domain of a child’s life. Rather than considering childhood obesity as just a public health matter, it requires all city departments to contribute in their policies and planning.

The Amsterdam Healthy Weight Approach programme has been linked to a city-wide decrease in childhood obesity, with the percentage of overweight and obese kids aged two to eight falling from 21% to 18.7% in 2017. The scheme is budgeted until 2033, when the city’s first ‘healthy generation” will turn 18 years old.

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The full figures for percentages across each area in 2018 and 2023 and the percentage increase or decrease are available below.

Reception

Year 6

He said: "There are some early indications in Amsterdam that there's good work going on. There's not many examples yet, let's make Essex the second example."

According to government figures overall in Essex obesity in reception age children went down from 22.4 per cent in 2018/19 to 21.1 in 2023/24. Obesity in year 6 children went up from 31.4 per cent to 32.6 per cent

Harlow has the highest proportion of year 6 children in Essex classified as overweight, latest fights have shown

Latest NHS figures from 23/24 have shown that 39.1 per cent of year 6 youngsters in Harlow are classified as overweight or obese - that figure is up from 37.3 per cent in 2018/2019

The highest proportion of children at reception in Essex who are classified as overweight is found in Tendring. In 23/24 26.2 per cent had a problem with overweight down from 28.3 per cent in 18/19.

He said: "The future of the solution to obesity is a place-based approach. Actually the future to public health is a place based approach and that means in a nutshell good place-based working is about saying there's an outcome we want to change, there might be 10 or 20 determinants of the outcome

"In order to be successful you have to combine your effort across all the determinants in the outcome in the same place if one person's putting it in one determinant over here and somebody else is doing over here well that's never going to work. So I think concerted effort across all the determines the problem in the same place that's probably the key thing and that's what we're trying to do in Essex.

He added that parish councils and other community groups are "critical" to the future of public health. He said: "If we're thinking about behaviour change and helping people to maintain good health behaviours I can tell you as a slightly lapsed behavioural scientist the number one thing which drives continuation of the behaviour, good or bad, is social support

"So we need to across Essex but at local level, look at how we can massively increase the number of people who can support each other around healthy weight."