We're feeling really good here at Slimming World. That's partly down to the exciting research, campaigns and events we've been involved in (see below) but also because we're well into our annual Slim for Good campaign which launched last week.

At Slimming World we're all about supporting members to achieve long term, sustainable weight loss. To do this we work to create a welcoming atmosphere that is full of kindness, compassion and care. The Slim for Good campaign encourages our members to extend that kindness to their local community by getting sponsored to raise money for a local good cause chosen by the group. All of our 11,000 groups take part and we'll be certain to update you with all the weight loss and fundraising results at the end of the campaign.

A survey of 3,500 people who joined Slimming World in January 2014 found that long term weight loss is the priority for 90% of people when they start our programme, while fast weight loss is the main priority for only 7%.

Asked about what their priorities had been in the past, the survey revealed that only 51% of respondents had previously seen long term results as their key priority and as many as 44% had previously been more focused on fast weight loss.

The results suggest that people are more likely to choose Slimming World for long-term sustainable results. 91% of people who joined Slimming World in January plan to stick with their new healthy lifestyle for at least a year, the survey found.

Slimming World was delighted to present the national 'Award for Public Health' to a student midwife from Salford University for a project to help improve the experience and service for deaf couples in childbirth and pregnancy.

Paulina Ewa Sporek's 'Deaf Nest' initiative - a project to develop resources and tools for midwives so that deaf couples have a much more positive experience of maternity services - scooped the Slimming World Award for Public Health at the Annual Midwifery Awards in London in January.

Paulina is the first student midwife to win one of the main Royal College of Midwife awards in its fourteen year history. Read more here.

Working in partnership with around 70 health trusts and local authorities, Slimming World on Referral is making a contribution to supporting the NHS with weight management at a local level.

The Slimming World Partnerships team is often asked how our referral programme works in practice. For any health professionals or commissioners who would like to know more about how other local authorities are setting criteria, administering the scheme and what results they are seeing, here is a case study of our new pilot partnership with NHS Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group (CGG) and Gloucestershire County Council (GCC). The scheme, which enables a wide variety of local primary and community care staff to refer patients to Slimming World, is already showing some very positive results, with 50% of all referred patients achieving a 5% weight loss in 12 weeks. Read about the Gloucestershire CCG referral scheme here.

We recently polled readers of Weight and Health Now for views on advertising guidelines for weight management programmes. Current guidelines prevent commercial weight management companies from featuring successful case studies who had a starting BMI over 30 in marketing materials. Slimming World is concerned that the current codes are outdated and could encourage people in higher weight categories - who are at the greatest risk of ill health - to seek out more drastic weight loss methods if they are led to believe that support from evidence based commercial weight loss companies is not an option available to them.

The poll revealed widespread concern over the current code and a strong feeling that it should be updated. Read the findings of the poll here

Slimming World's nutrition and research team presented two posters at the 2013 UK Society for Behavioural Medicine Conference in Oxford in December.

The research included initial results from: