UK moves to tackle obesity in pharmacy funding push

Louise Fullwood of Pinsent Masons was commenting after the UK government unveiled fresh funding to support patients living with obesity, by improving access to weight loss services and treatments through in-person pharmacy consultations and online support services.

Under the new agreement, the government will contribute up to £50m in investment that will allow eligible patients access to care, which include wrap-around services and obesity treatments. A further £35 in grant funding will be provided by pharmaceutical company Lilly – the maker of popular weight loss jab Mounjaro.

NHS organisations will be able to apply for a share of this funding and will be invited to put forward innovative care models for people living with obesity in the UK. At least £10m of the funding has already been earmarked to support proposals in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The programme is in line with the government’s wider 10-year health strategy, announced last month, which champions a revamped care model to relieve pressure on the NHS by shifting the emphasis of patient care “from hospital to community”, “analogue to digital”, and “from sickness to prevention”.

Eligible patients could access the new programme of weight management services as early as summer 2026.

Fullwood, a life sciences expert at Pinsent Masons, said the measures were a welcome continuation of the growing shift towards utilising pharmacies more effectively to help reduce the burden on GP services.

“Increasing the role of pharmacists as frontline primary care providers has been a trend over the past few years, particularly as they demonstrated during the pandemic that they could take on this role effectively,” said Fullwood. “This is another move to take some of the burden away from stretched GP practices and use a combination of digital platforms – which are already being used very successfully by private providers as part of wrap-around weight management services – and the skilled and well-trained staff at UK pharmacies.”

Since 2023, both England and Northern Ireland have progressively expanded the legal powers for pharmacists to directly prescribe a range of medicines, without the need for a GP prescription, in a bid to relieve strained GP services and increase patient accessibility to treatment at convenient local pharmacy locations. In a similar move to unburden the NHS, pharmacies in Scotland have been able to prescribe for common clinical conditions since September 2020, while Wales rolled out an extended range of prescribing services in 2022.

Fullwood said the UK-wide funding will be particularly critical at a time when weight loss drugs and injections are still being sold illegally online without appropriate safeguards in place.

“Using in-person pharmacy consultations also addresses concerns around inappropriate prescribing of weight loss injections done on a remote or questionnaire basis, where there have been a series of injuries and deaths and already led to additional regulation,” Fullwood said. “Ensuring that patients are actually seen, weighed and their wider health and other medications assessed will make prescribing safer”

In December, the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) urged the public not to buy weight loss medicines from beauty salons or via social media without a healthcare professional’s prescription. Earlier this year the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) published updated guidance calling on pharmacies to verify information provided by patients for certain medicines sold online, including weight management drugs.