February 5, 2025 — Yesterday, another report came out to suggest that the prevalence of obesity and overweight may have peaked in the American population – at a combined prevalence of 75%. This particular report comes from Epic Research, based on electronic health records for more than 100 million patients. Every time one of these reports emerges, headlines are […]
December 11, 2023 — “Prediction is difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” Niels Bohr and Yogi Berra both get credit for this pithy bit of wisdom, but the truth is that the proverbial expression has a Danish origin and an unknown author. So now that wit and wisdom emboldens us to look back at the trends we thought […]
December 10, 2022 — In a perverse way, there might be some good news in the current frothy coverage about new medicines for obesity and diabetes. We are a bit fed up with nonsense about who “deserves” access to care with drugs like semaglutide. But it does serve to highlight some of the usually hidden biases about treating obesity. […]
April 22, 2020 — “I was never involved in a model. At least this kind of a model,” said our President at a recent press briefing. But now it seems that all of us are getting a crash course in modeling and model assumptions for making health policy. Perhaps we will learn to think more critically about the output […]
July 3, 2013 — Forecasting the natural progression of the obesity epidemic makes sense if you want to know whether anything we’re doing is having an impact. Just like a good story, every epidemic has a beginning, middle, and an end. Lately, we’ve been seeing signs that obesity’s prevalence is leveling. Policy makers who think they have the answer […]
