Obesity Care Week Begins Today

Today marks the opening of a big week of awareness. Not awareness of obesity, but awareness of the need for better care for obesity. You see, people are plenty aware that obesity is a problem. Certainly people who are living with it know it. It’s the subject of lots of idle conversation and unhelpful suggestions about how we should lose weight. But the fact is that actual care for obesity is all too rare. And that’s the reason Obesity Care Week starts today.

Look for the #OCW2020 hashtag throughout the week on your favorite social media channels and join the conversation.

Monday: Weight Bias

Monday the focus will be weight bias. If you follow ConscienHealth at all, you will know that bias is perhaps the biggest barrier to better obesity care. Indeed, because bias shapes the public view of obesity, it’s the biggest barrier to coping with obesity.

Tuesday: Obesity Treatment

Let’s be frank. We don’t have all the options we’d like for obesity care. Behavioral support helps, but for most people, it falls way short of resolving the problem. We have better anti-obesity meds today than we did a decade ago, but they don’t work for everyone. And then surgery is perhaps the most potent treatment, but even that is not a cure-all.

Even though none of these options are perfect, they all can be quite helpful. So we need to understand what they are and use them wisely.

Wednesday: World Obesity Day

This is the big day because it’s the first time ever that everyone all over the world has united behind a single day for this cause. It’s all about how deep the roots of obesity run. ConscienHealth’s Ted Kyle will be hosting a twitter chat at 2 pm Eastern time for the Obesity Society with some of the top experts in the field. We’ll also be presenting in a webinar at 7 pm Eastern time on Weight Bias and Stigma, sponsored by the Johnson & Johnson Institute.

Thursday: Access to Care

Options for obesity care don’t matter much if people cannot have access to them. All too often, health plans make it difficult or impossible to get early care for obesity before it leads to serious complications. This will be our focus for Thursday.

Friday: Childhood Obesity

Lots of people talk about childhood obesity, but finding good care for families affected is ridiculously hard. The focus on Friday will be on how this must change.

Saturday: I Care

To cap the week, people will share personal stories of why and how they care about this cause.

So take that next step, sign up here, and join in this week of changing the way we care for obesity.

Obesity Care Week, graphics courtesy of obesitycareweek.org

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March 1, 2020