August 12, 2022 — An interesting conversation popped up in a recent session to prepare for the upcoming White House Conference on Hunger Nutrition and Health. It was about obesity drug prices, utilization, and ultimately, access to care. Darius Mozaffarian was a key speaker at this session organized by the Bipartisan Policy Center. He offered his opinion that you […]
August 10, 2022 — Before the COVID-19 pandemic, we could find lots of talk about the potential of telehealth – and see its potential for extending the reach of obesity care. Translation into action and care delivery, though, was very slow. When the pandemic became a constraint for face to face care delivery, that changed overnight. Telehealth care for […]
August 2, 2022 — At what cost can we decide that obesity care is worth the money? Until now, the answer has largely been to refuse considering this question. But as the cost of untreated obesity adds up, it’s becoming impossible to dodge the question anymore and an increasing number of serious analyses are underway. The Institute for Clinical […]
August 1, 2022 — In the New York Times recently, our friend Maya Cohen described her experiences chasing the hoops set before her by health insurance – interfering with medically necessary obesity care. But she did not stop there. She came to the YWM Engage conference to connect with and inspire other advocates for people living with obesity. So […]
July 28, 2022 — State and federal experts on health are quite happy to talk about the serious health concern of obesity. But we can’t help wondering about the action that results from that talk. So it’s worthwhile to take a good look at what state health plans do for people affected by obesity. According to a new study […]
July 14, 2022 — We’ve all got our reading assignments. The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) has released its draft report on effectiveness and value for the current options in obesity medicine. There’s a lot to process in there. But the bottom line is clear enough. Phentermine/topiramate (Qsymia) offers the best value, says the report. The most […]
July 1, 2022 — It’s not just America. The emergence of a highly effective medical treatment for obesity is scrambling the usual approach to obesity all over the world. Because of the disconnect between the biological reality of obesity and popular misconceptions of this disease, healthcare systems typically put people off from getting medical care for it. That approach, […]
June 30, 2022 — Okay, this is hardly a final victory, but it sure does feel good. The U.S. House Appropriations Committee released its legislative report on funding for Health and Human Services. It’s a beastly 623 page document that goes over all the spending priorities for the department. However, if you dig deep into it, there’s a paragraph […]
June 26, 2022 — Health at Every Size® is both an idea and a trademark. The trademark is owned by the Association for Size Diversity and Health. The idea is all about a view of health independent of a person’s weight. So folks who travel in the HAES® orbit take a dim view of the word obesity – even […]
June 24, 2022 — For decades now, Lee Kaplan and Caroline Apovian have led what was known as the Blackburn Course in Obesity Medicine every year at Harvard in June. This year, the name of the course has changed to Obesity Treatment 2022. It has moved to the Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine, where Richard Rothstein has joined Kaplan […]
