Key Summary
- Boots has partnered with Vitality to give members access to the Boots Online Doctor weight-loss programme from this spring.
- Vitality members can use activity points or receive up to 25 per cent discounts on GLP-1 weight loss medications through the service.
- The programme combines medication, lifestyle coaching, a progress-tracking app, and aftercare to help people lose weight and keep it off.
Pharmacy and beauty chain Boots has entered into a partnership with health and life insurer Vitality to allow its members to access Boots Online Doctor Weight Loss Service from this spring.
To promote preventative care, the Vitality members who decide to lead a healthier lifestyle, and decrease their chances of regaining the lost weight, would be provided up to 25 percent discount for weight-loss drugs.
Members of Vitality currently earn points based on their daily step count, gym visits or activities such as ParkRun, Daily Mail reports.
Those points will now be able to be used for discounts on weight-loss jabs from the Boots Online Doctor service.
Vitality currently rewards members with healthier lifestyles through a tiered status, from Bronze, Silver and Gold to Platinum.
The scheme has been rolled out to incentivise people to make healthy lifestyle changes to decrease their chances of putting the weight back on.
Boots Online Doctor’s Weight Loss Service is a combination of treatment from experts with a range of wrap-around support, which includes promotion of sustainable lifestyle and behavioural changes, access to an app that tracks progress and a free one-year aftercare programme for those who stopped the medication.
The programme was inspired from a research by Vitality, which showed that pairing GLP-1 weight loss medications with even moderate exercise can cut hospital costs by up to 63 per cent in a year.
The medicines involved in the service will be delivered to the customers’ homes or at any one of the 1,800 Boots stores.
“Given the growing demand for weight loss medicines to treat obesity and their huge potential for transforming the nation’s health, kicking off this partnership with our Boots Online Doctor Weight Loss Service was an easy choice,” said Jamie Kerruish, chief healthcare officer at Boots.
Vitality had last year begun offering weight loss drugs to its members last year as a part of its holistic weight loss programme.
