Follow the accumulating evidence and observations that shape our view of health policy and obesity
March 3, 2021 — Today for Obesity Care Week (OCW2021), the focus is access to care. But access to care is not such a tidy, self-contained subject. That’s because the problems we have with access to obesity care often actually start with weigh bias – the OCW2021 theme for Monday. Let us explain with the experience of a good […]
March 2, 2021 — Today in Obesity Care Week (OCW2021) the focus is treatment and prevention of obesity. Note that the focus is both. Not one or the other. For decades now, we have watched ineffective talk about a false choice: shall we resolve to treat obesity or prevent it? “We can’t treat our way out of this epidemic,” […]
March 1, 2021 — This is a classic headline versus study problem. Except the problem goes beyond the headline. It starts with a preprint of a study. The study has not yet gone through peer review. It goes deep into the weeds of the immune response to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. But the Guardian doesn’t want to lose its readers […]
February 28, 2021 — Is there a political hot button any hotter right now than cancel culture? The BBC aptly suggests these words have become potent weapons in political culture wars. A former president, voted out of office, defends himself a victim of cancel culture. The list is long for people who feel like aggrieved victims. So perhaps this […]
February 27, 2021 — Power and privilege serves itself first. So a limited supply of COVID-19 vaccines can bring forth an ugly dimension of humanity. Sharp elbows come out as some people try to put themselves first. But in other situations, we see a sharp contrast. We see people reaching out to help others who need vaccines urgently. The […]
February 26, 2021 — “Medical care is nice, but it’s surely not the answer to obesity. Behaviors matter.” These words came to us from the audience of a webinar for a regional business group on health. Oddly enough, those words came on the same day that JAMA published yet another major study on semaglutide for treating obesity. Two weeks […]
February 25, 2021 — Yesterday, FDA released a detailed analysis of all the available data on a third COVID-19 vaccine up for approval in the U.S. Tomorrow, an independent advisory committee will meet to review this vaccine from Johnson & Johnson. But it already looks like it is heading for approval. For one thing, FDA reviewers concluded the vaccine […]
February 24, 2021 — Good news seems a bit rare these days. So reading that a robust new analysis says type 2 diabetes incidence is dropping in high-income countries prompts more questions. Is this trend real? Or is it an artifact of this one, very large dataset? Does this represent progress? Or merely a shift in the global patterns […]
February 23, 2021 — SF Eater tells us that 13 bakeries in San Francisco have “killer croissants.” The Atlanta Journal Constitution tells us that croissants, along with white bread, tie us to an early death. Their source for this epidemiological wisdom is the BMJ. That treasure trove of epidemiology – the PURE study – has yielded another publication. This […]
February 22, 2021 — When NEJM recently published impressive results for a new obesity treatment, it caused quite a stir. Now it looks like semaglutide might have some serious competition coming right behind it. Late last week, Lilly announced results for two phase 3 studies of tirzepatide. These were both studies for type-2 diabetes. Effects on body weight were […]
