March 13, 2021 — Eight years have passed since the American Medical Association decided obesity really is a complex chronic disease. For treating this disease, we have more options now. We have a handful of anti-obesity medicines that are new. A new study in Obesity Surgery tells us their use has more than doubled over the last decade. So […]
September 10, 2020 — Back in February we complained about “a near complete failure of transparency in drug safety decision making” by FDA. Our complaint had to do with taking lorcaserin (Belviq) off the market. Today, FDA took a step toward a bit more transparency. In the New England Journal of Medicine, senior FDA officials explained their thinking about […]
February 7, 2020 — The decade just past brought quite a bit of change in drugs used to treat obesity. At the beginning of the decade, options were few. Prescribing was almost nil. Now we have five new drugs for obesity. For type 2 diabetes, weight-sparing drugs have taken a dominant role in prescribing. One of those drugs, liraglutide, […]
September 2, 2019 — Healthcare systems all around the world treat obesity weirdly. On one hand, providers tell us it’s a serious condition. It has many complications. On the other hand, health systems routinely delay treatment. They let complications pile up and obesity becomes almost untreatable. This is an obvious mistake. And once again, a new study tells us […]
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 […]
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 […]
March 26, 2019 — If you talk to researchers and clinicians deeply involved in the future of obesity treatment, you will find quite a buzz about a type 2 diabetes drug called semaglutide. It’s a cousin of the most successful new drug for treating obesity – liraglutide. Right now, both of these drugs are sold only as an injection. […]
March 12, 2019 — Crisis. It’s a time of intense difficulty. Or it’s a time when a difficult, important decision must be made. And finally, it can be a turning point toward either failure or recovery. For decades now, all the talk about childhood obesity has been about crisis. That crisis talk is spreading around the world as childhood […]
March 1, 2019 — “I just worry about opening the floodgates.” These are the kinds of things you might hear when you talk to folks who’ve never lived with obesity about access to care. But undaunted by such implicit bias, 35 volunteers made more than 100 visits with their elected representatives to ask for real action now on obesity. […]
February 24, 2018 — This story is profoundly sad. We were reading about a recent decision by the USPSTF to affirm a broad recommendation for intensive lifestyle programs for obesity. The decision is a good one. Reporting on it by the American Academy of Family Practice (AAFP) unfortunately is not so good. AAFP presents the views of someone they […]
