Amway Corporation

Abstract

Overweight and obesity have become a serious public health challenge in China, not only contributing to a significant burden of chronic diseases, but also generating spillover effects in terms of individual behavior and socioeconomic costs. Although policy measures such as the “Weight Management Year” initiative have established a governance framework, weight management in practice remains mired instructural dilemmas, including the “asymmetry between willpower and environment” and the “difficulty in sustaining behavioral change.” This research, through an in-depth survey of 1,771 participants across eight cities, validates the core value of the “healthy community” model in overcoming the above-said dilemmas. Research findings show that the community provides not only a place for interaction, but it also offers key external variables that effectively enhance compliance through peer help, supervision mechanisms, and emotional support. Statistics clearly reveal a linear positive correlation between participation frequency and weight loss effectiveness. In a period of 100 days, higher levels of community engagement are associated with more significant improvements in body weight and fat management. More specifically, among those participants who “always” took part in weight management activities, the rate of achieving the weight loss target (≥3%) was as high as 64.7%, compared to only 7.9% among those who “never” participated. In addition, such model effectively leads to systematic optimization of participants’lifestyles, including balanced nutritional intake and the removal of unhealthy habits such as long sedentary hours and staying up late, thereby achieving a healthy pathway of “losing fat without losing muscle.” On the psychological dimension, the community significantly alleviates participants’ feelings of isolation and enhances their subjective well-being and sense of social support. Furthermore, 57.9% of high-frequency participants reported a perceived trend of reduced medical expenses, suggesting that effective weight management carries certain spillover benefits across psychological and economic dimensions. In sum, China should further advance the intervention threshold by integrating community-based weight management models into the foundational projects of chronic disease prevention and health promotion. Through deep integration of digital tools and social platforms, a comprehensive supportive microenvironment should be established, shifting from mere treatment to systematic social governance and prevention. Such approach is expected to effectively alleviate the public health pressure in the context of an aging society.

Download the full report：Health Communities Contribute to Weight Management