One year ago, Katrina Messiha’s (ESR1) earliest secondment hosted by GCU mainly entailed experience and collaboration with Obesity Action Scotland’s (OAS) co-creation work. Funded by the Scottish Government and hosted by the RCPSG, OAS offers clinical guidance and advocacy on addressing obesity in Scotland. OAS hosts the National Co-ordinator for a Whole Systems Approach (WSA) to Diet and Healthy Weight Programme. Other partners in the programme include The Scottish Government, Public Health Scotland, and Food Standards Scotland, who collectively work to govern the WSA programme.
Katrina attended OAS meetings led by Niamh Smith, to observe how local leads from the early adopter areas discuss their progress and learn from each other. This fed into an understanding of interactional knowledge production/ translation, a key dimension of co-creation. Overall, this enriching secondment gave direct exposure to a real-life co-creation campaign at scale, elevating an understanding of its operationalisation on the ground and reinforcing the need for proper staffing, prioritisation and momentum. The secondment lasted a month – including some Scottish culture; namely, Burns supper and a hike in the national parks!