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Presents results of focus group discussions held with 300 nine‐to‐11‐year old UK children. Questions were asked about whether it matters if someone is fat or thin; whether a fat child should take any action; what problems they might have; and the relationship between fatness, thinness and health. Considerable complexity emerged; children divided fat children into those for whom it was natural and those for whom it was self‐inflicted. They showed a great deal of sympathy for “naturally” fat children. However, they also felt that fat children would be bullied. Girls seemed less able than boys to resist the pressures to be thin, but also showed considerable ability to distance themselves from media images of thin women. Although children had learned the orthodoxy surrounding health, fat and overweight, they did not believe that “thin is good, fat is bad” and did not tend to link weight control with exercise.

This paper aims to discuss some of the obstacles to implementing policy and strategy related to health promoting prisons. It focuses on the role of prison officers and raises issues concerning their conditions of service, training and organisational culture in a situation where the prison system faces security issues, overcrowding and high levels of ill health among prisoners.

This paper emerged as a result of significant overlapping themes between two separate studies conducted by the authors. The paper draws on the authors' qualitative data from these studies.

The findings demonstrate the ambiguities and tensions in changing organisational cultures and among prison staff. Alongside the qualitative data, the paper draws on theory regarding policy implementation at the micro‐level to show how staff can block or speed up that implementation.

Prison officers are an essential part of health promoting prisons, but have been relatively ignored in the discussion of how to create healthier prisons.

The contribution that prison staff make to creating health promoting prisons has been under‐explored, yet pertinent theory can show how they can be more effectively involved in making changes in organisational culture.

Attempts to draw together some of the key themes which those attempting to promote food and cooking skills need to consider, with particular emphasis on issues affected by gender. Raises concerns about the construction of “eating disorders”, of diet and weight concerns among women, and of how food is managed in the household. Refers to some of the feminist literature in order to help to explain these patterns. Discusses how to tackle problems with food and eating in a preventive way in schools.

Formalised support services for prisoners that rely on peer methods of delivery show promising health and social outcomes but there is also conjecture that negative effects, both at an individual and organisational level, can occur. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Individuals with recognised professional expertise from various sectors (including ex-prisoners) were invited to contribute to an expert symposium to share their perceptions of the positive and negative effects of peer interventions in prison. Discussions and debate were audio recorded with the consent of all delegates and verbatim transcripts were analysed using framework analysis.

According to the participants, peer interventions in the prison setting created both positive and negative impacts. It was clear from the evidence gathered that peer interventions in prisons can impact positively on health outcomes, but these effects were perceived to be more well-defined for peer deliverers. The notion that peer deliverers can be subjected to “burnout” suggests that supervisory processes for peer workers need to be considered carefully in order to avoid the intervention from being counter-productive. Organisationally, one of the salient issues was the adverse effects that peer interventions cause to the security of the prison.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time an expert symposium has been conducted to specifically examine peer interventions in prison and to consider the effects, both positive and negative, of such schemes.

The aim of this paper is to qualitatively examine the ways in which primary school children, aged between 7 and 12, perceive various facets of obesity as defined by the common sense model of illness representation (CCM).

The study was qualitative in nature. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 33 children on all dimensions of the CSM. Twenty four children were normal weight and nine were overweight. A drawing task formed the methodology for the “identity” section of the interview.

Although children identified food intake as a main cause of obesity, almost half did not name sedentary behaviours as a cause of obesity. Duration (timeline) of obesity was regarded by most children as reliant on a person's undertaking of positive health behaviours. Normal weight children were found to list more severe consequences of obesity than the overweight group. It was found that experience contributed to the detailed knowledge of overweight children's perceptions of cures of obesity. Overweight children also spoke of personal incidents of barriers to cures.

The findings suggest that the CSMs can be used to classify children's perceptions of obesity. Future childhood obesity interventions can utilise these findings to create campaigns and strategies that are more consistent with children's understandings of this condition.

To the authors' knowledge, no previous study has examined children's perceptions of obesity beyond perceived causes.