Posts Tagged ‘childhood obesity’

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 […]

A Surge in Pediatric Obesity Treatment? Or a Small Uptick?

February 17, 2024 — Reporting for Reuters, Robin Respaut and Chad Terhune tell us that prescription data in the U.S. reveals increasing use of semaglutide for obesity in adolescents. Does this signal a huge surge in pediatric obesity treatment? Or merely a small uptick from almost negligible access to care? That all depends on the story you want to […]

Motivational Interviewing Flunks a Test with Pediatricians

February 2, 2024 — Motivational interviewing is a respected tool for helping people who are seeking care for obesity. It’s  all about listening  to and supporting a person’s motivations wanting medical obesity care. But yet again, we are learning that motivation is not the magic answer for overcoming obesity. This time, in Pediatrics, Ken Resnicow and colleagues have published […]

Block That Metaphor! Ozempic Orthodontia

January 18, 2024 — E.B. White is long gone from this life and Block That Metaphor! is dormant at The New Yorker. But we need them back. The Washington Post has a new and twisted metaphor about obesity treatment, casting Ozempic as something like orthodontia. Kate Cohen writes: “I always thought I’d be thin if I were rich. “I’d […]

Reason and Emotion in Obesity Care for Young Persons

December 18, 2023 — Both reason and emotion play a role in obesity care for young persons. Feelings about this subject are strong. The experience of living with obesity is intense for families, children, and youth. Recent reporting makes this clear. Equally clear is reporting and new data that tell us we’re not coping with it very well. Severe […]

Moving Beyond Weight in Pediatric Obesity Research and Care

November 30, 2023 — For the last two days, we have been both observing and participating in an NIH meeting on pharmacotherapy for obesity in children and youth that has been quite a pleasant surprise. Scientists, clinicians, parents, and young persons came together in a stimulating exchange of ideas. Perhaps the most notable dialogue focused on a desire to […]

“Important” Findings in Child Obesity with No Significance

October 10, 2023 — “The findings have important implications for future intervention research in terms of the effectiveness of intervention components and characteristics … It is important that policy makers continue to recognise the school setting as a vehicle for tackling childhood obesity.” These conclusions from a systematic review and meta-analysis of effectiveness for school-based interventions  in child obesity […]

YWM Engage: Connections and Care in Childhood Obesity

September 26, 2023 — A leftover from the days of moral panic about obesity is the designation of September as National Childhood Obesity Month. The intentions were good but with prevention as the sole focus, families and youth already living with severe obesity got the message. They did not really count. But at the YWM 2023 Engage convention, OAC […]

Is Childhood Obesity a Public Health Emergency?

September 14, 2023 — Epidemic, pandemic, syndemic, crisis, emergency: well-meaning people attach these words to obesity in general and often to childhood obesity in particular. Two decades ago, Cara Ebbeling, Dorota Pawlak, and David Ludwig proclaimed in Lancet that childhood obesity was a “public health crisis” and prescribed a “common sense cure.” But a new perspective published yesterday in Pediatrics […]

The Overwhelming Appeal of Simplistic Obesity Thinking

August 24, 2023 — Simplistic thinking about obesity has an overwhelming appeal. Sadly, though, it has a dismal history of letting us down. “Yes, calories in/calories out really is the key to weight loss,” writes Tamar Haspel in the Washington Post. To insure we don’t miss the point, she closes by saying: “It’s the calories, people. It’s the calories.” […]