10 Highlights of Obesity Week Not to Miss

The first ever Obesity Week meeting opens on Monday in Atlanta and runs for the entire week at the Georgia World Congress Center. With both the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery and the Obesity Society meeting at once, you’ll need to plan very carefully if you’re going to be sure you don’t miss the highlights of the week.

And if you’re not going, you can catch the highlights of the meeting here each day. Regardless, here’s a subjective list of ten events not to miss.

  1. Advocacy Forum. Tuesday 1:30pm Room A411. Top experts in employer wellness and patient advocacy will present and discuss rapid changes in employer wellness programs and the impact on people with obesity.
  2. New Obesity Treatment Guidelines. Tuesday 4:30pm Thomas Murphy Ballroom. Donna Ryan will receive the George Bray Founders Award at the Obesity Society opening session, precisely when the new obesity treatment guidelines are released. Count on hearing more about these guidelines that she shepherded to publication in partnership co-chair Michael Jensen.
  3. New Data from Look AHEAD. Tuesday 6:00pm Thomas Murphy Ballroom.  Edward Gregg, Henry Pownall, and Xavier Pi-Sunyer will present new insights from this landmark sudy.
  4. Keynote on Brown Fat and New Therapeutics. Wednesday 8am Thomas Murphy Ballroom. Bruce Spiegelman will present cutting edge science on brown fat and opportunities it’s opening for new approaches to treatment.
  5. Surgical Standards of Care Debate. Wednesday 10am Sidney Marcus Auditorium. Three hot topics in bariatric surgery will be discussed: accreditation, banding’s future, and diabetes treatment. Get a good seat.
  6. Five poster presentations by ConscienHealth founder Ted Kyle. Wednesday 11:30am Exhibit Hall A. It’s pretty obvious that we have a significant interest in these studies. Is that an adequate disclosure of bias?
  7. ASMBS Top 10 Papers. Wednesday 1:30pm Thomas Murphy Ballroom. A whole host of great papers will be presented here, including new data on diabetes from the landmark Swedish Obese Subjects Study.
  8. Tom Farley, NYC Commissioner of Health. Thursday 10:30am Thomas Murphy Ballroom. Farley has been at the center of some of the most aggressive public health efforts to control obesity.
  9. Brian Wansink, Mindlessly Eating Better. Thursday 1pm Sydney Marcus Auditorium. Wansink will bring unique insights from behavioral economics into sharp focus.
  10. JAMA Journal Symposium. Friday 5:15pm. Ed Livingston and Alison Field will chair an outstanding session on the many different forms of obesity and their treatment.

Admittedly, Obesity Week will have many other highlights. This highly subjective list of ten is just a starting point.

Click here to access the Obesity Week schedule and here for the mobile app that can guide you through the meeting.

Atlanta and Southeastern U.S. at Night, photograph © NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center / flickr

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