OCW2022: All About Real Obesity Care

The care in Obesity Care Week (OCW2022) is all about offering real care for real persons facing real harm from obesity in their lives. Yet more than nine out of ten people living with obesity never get any real medical care for this complex, chronic disease.

We have good clinical guidelines for obesity care, but they don’t often guide providers to deliver good care for obesity.

But why is this? How can people find the care they need? How can health systems better meet the health needs of people living with obesity? In today’s video release for OCW2022, James Zervios explores these questions with obesity medicine physician Fatima Cody Stanford.

Enough Talk, Time to Act

Dr. Stanford has a message for our health systems and providers. WAKE UP! Ten years ago, the American Medical Association determined that obesity really is a complex chronic disease. It’s not a behavioral problem. Not something an individual can reliably fix with a decision to eat less and move more. It is a problem of physiology that has gone awry. But our health systems seem to ignore this basic fact, she says:

“Obesity is a disease. Yet, we don’t treat it as such. We play the blame game for patients that happen to suffer from this disease. This has got to stop. We have evidence based therapies that help treat this disease and they go underutilized. Never would we do this for any other disease process and we have to stop this for obesity. We must treat it seriously with the tools that we have and continue to make progress with additional tools for this patient population.”

In short, it’s time to set the glib talk about obesity aside. It’s time to get to work, reforming the way we deliver care for it.

So in Stanford’s interview, you’ll find a wide ranging conversation with an inspiring obesity medicine physician. It’s full of insights for patients, providers, and policy makers. She tells us that it’s time to act. To seek out the care we need, to deliver it respectfully, and to break down the barriers that block most people from getting the care they need.

Click here for the interview with Stanford, here for more on the options for obesity care, and here for more on clinical practice guidelines.

Obesity Care Week graphics and resources available at obesitycareweek.org

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March 1, 2022