Archive for the ‘Health Policy’ Category

Obesity Care Week: New Roles for Old Tools of Care

March 7, 2024 — Obesity Care Week this year comes at a time when we have shiny new tools for treating obesity that are garnering a whole lot of attention. One would have be living under a rock not to have heard all the buzz about semaglutide, tirzepatide, and a host of other medicines coming soon for obesity. But […]

Obesity Care Week: Equity for a Treatable Chronic Disease

March 6, 2024 — One of the core principles Obesity Care Week is that this chronic disease is treatable. That’s becoming plain to see with emergence of advanced GLP-1 therapies. But equity in access to obesity care is practically non-existent. Prices for these medicines are high, supplies are low, and health plans make a sport of torturing people who […]

Obesity Care Week: Five Enduring Principles

March 5, 2024 — On this, the second day of Obesity Care Week, let’s step back from all the complexity of obesity and focus on five simple principles that hold great promise for improving the way we care for people with this disease. It really doesn’t have to be so hard. 1. It Is Undeniable That Obesity Is a […]

Pretending to Keep the Cost of Treating Obesity Down

March 4, 2024 — Today marks the start of Obesity Care Week and all over the globe, this is World Obesity Day. To mark this day, dozens of advocates from all of the major organizations that care about improving the standard of care for obesity have converged on the U.S. Capitol for dialog with policymakers about opening the pathway […]

Yogurt Gets an Ad Claim for Preventing Diabetes

March 3, 2024 — Five years ago, Danone asked FDA if it would be OK to say eating yogurt might prevent type 2 diabetes. Or to be precise, “eating yogurt regularly may reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes.” Friday, FDA told Danone, yep, we’re cool with that. Or, in the language of the agency: “FDA concludes that the […]

Making Sense of Ultra-Processed Research Clickbait

March 2, 2024 — Nutrition research in medical journals follows trends that define what the cognoscenti can regard healthy – or not. For decades, the bad stuff was fat. Then we switched to the sugar is toxic meme and that was the preoccupation through the 2010s. Now there can be no doubt. Research on ultra-processed foods is providing a steady […]

Health Systems Hindering Health for People with Obesity

March 1, 2024 — In a new cohort study, it is plain to see that, even before the advent of new GLP-1 medicines for obesity, primary care patients could get better health from obesity care. But health systems hindering delivery of obesity care make this exceedingly unlikely for most people living this disease. A Large Cohort Study from an […]

The Tension Between Cynicism, Skepticism, and Pragmatism

February 25, 2024 — Are we cynical? We can surely find excuses to be. Examples of cynicism pop up at every glance. Certainly we see it in politics and public policy. Closer to home at ConscienHealth, people routinely find reasons for cynicism about all kinds of medical research and advice – especially nutrition and obesity. This is a real […]

Weight Stigma Through the Cultural Lens of the Global South

February 22, 2024 — Scholars have noted that in lower income countries, obesity can be taken as a signal of wealth. This observation in turn fuels a presumption that weight stigma might not be a problem in countries of the Global South. But a new scoping review in Obesity Facts suggests this presumption is likely false. Laura Eggerichs, Oliver […]

CDC Leaders Call for Both Obesity Prevention and Care

February 21, 2024 — Should this be surprising? Probably not. It had to come to this. But this is a pleasant bend in a long arc toward a more realistic approach for obesity at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Three leaders at CDC write in Health Affairs Forefront that we need both prevention and care to […]