June 25, 2019 — Until recently, the bar has been very low for obesity care in most of healthcare. “Instruct the patient to lose weight” is the most common guidance. However, three new publications in Obesity make it clear how much that’s changing. It’s clear that healthcare is setting a higher bar for obesity care. A Proposed Standard for […]
June 23, 2019 — Obesity presents many problems. But two of them rise to the top: access to care and bias. Yesterday, at the Harvard Blackburn obesity course, Caroline Apovian reminded us why. Too often, people with obesity endure a lifetime of derision and medical neglect. With facts and case histories, she painted a searing picture of the suffering […]
June 22, 2019 — Disparities are everywhere you look in healthcare. But they’re especially glaring if you take a moment to look at effects, healthcare, and policies related to obesity. Speaking at the Harvard Blackburn Obesity Course in Boston yesterday, Fatima Cody Stanford explained: Excess weight in racial and ethnic minorities is not just a cultural phenomenon. Research points […]
June 10, 2019 — If the recent news of diabetes incidence going down seemed like great news, let’s remember there’s a flip side to that. In youth, type 2 diabetes is still rising. At the American Diabetes Association (ADA) scientific meeting, researchers spelled out the implication. Youth-onset diabetes (type 2) is harsh. Complications come faster and they hit harder. […]
June 6, 2019 — Talk is cheap. And frankly, we’re fed up with cheap talk about childhood obesity. Yes, we need effective prevention. But we don’t have it. Want proof? Look at the relentless rise in childhood obesity prevalence. So in the meantime, we need to start caring for kids, teens, and families who are living with obesity. And […]
May 22, 2019 — The Veteran’s Administration runs the biggest medical care program for obesity in world. It’s the MOVE! program. Because 41 percent of veterans are living with obesity, this disease has enormous cost implications for the VA system. Not because providing obesity care is expensive. Rather, it’s because the health costs of so much obesity – both […]
May 20, 2019 — Today we’re at the WHO for the WHA learning all about NCDs and UHC. Alphabet soup for lunch. Obesity? It was hiding behind the chia seeds at the breakfast buffet. Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) and universal health coverage (UHC) are big priorities at the 72nd World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva today. But within the global […]
May 18, 2019 — For severe teen obesity there’s only one very effective treatment option – bariatric surgery. But seldom do patients get it while they are still teens. For one thing, only six children’s hospitals have fully accredited bariatric surgery programs in all of the U.S. With six million kids who have severe obesity, the number of centers […]
April 30, 2019 — You might think that childhood obesity is a subject that draws a lot of sympathy from the public. You would be wrong. Today at the 26th European Congress on Obesity, we presented new data on a huge gap in the public understanding of severe obesity in young children. Even in young children, our data shows […]
April 22, 2019 — For the first time, we have evidence that treating obesity might reduce the risk of breast cancer, even in women before menopause. The research, published in the Annals of Surgery, finds a lower risk of breast cancer in women with severe obesity before and after menopause if they have bariatric surgery. Other studies have shown […]
