Posts Tagged ‘health equity’

Obesity Care Week: Equity for a Treatable Chronic Disease

March 6, 2024 — One of the core principles Obesity Care Week is that this chronic disease is treatable. That’s becoming plain to see with emergence of advanced GLP-1 therapies. But equity in access to obesity care is practically non-existent. Prices for these medicines are high, supplies are low, and health plans make a sport of torturing people who […]

A Meager Regain in Life Expectancy

December 5, 2023 — Let’s call this a half step. During the pandemic, Americans lost almost two and a half years in life expectancy. Men did worse than women. Now the news from CDC is that in 2022, we got back just a little more than a year of that loss – a meager regain in life expectancy. Jacob […]

Privilege, Stigma, and Better Obesity Care

June 8, 2023 — Typically, Ruth Marcus writes about justice for the Washington Post. But this week, she posted a very personal essay – “the most personal piece I have ever written” – about her experience with taking Ozempic. More than just a testimonial about the life-changing effects of better obesity care, it became an exploration of the interaction […]

Obesity Care for the Few and the Wealthy

December 27, 2022 — It’s nothing new. Overwhelmingly and for a long time it has been true that obesity care is mainly available to the few and the wealthy. This is the inevitable result of multiple forms of bias that collide in the chronic disease of obesity. Healthcare has a bias for serving the the wealthy. Health systems also […]

Food Security, Food as Medicine, Food for Hype

October 10, 2022 — Sunday at FNCE brought us a fireside chat with Sara Bleich, the first ever Director of Nutrition Security and Health Equity. Make no mistake about it, this is big. Because without secure access to genuinely nourishing food, it will be terribly hard to close the gap in health that comes from chronic diseases – including […]

Finding Value in the White House Nutrition Show

September 30, 2022 — With the benefit of a few days to reflect, we can find value in the big White House Conference on Nutrition, Hunger, and Health. Admittedly, it was nice to see obesity clearly identified as one of the diseases – just like hypertension and diabetes – that can result from poor nutrition. But this was never […]

Value, Volume, and Health in Food Systems

September 20, 2022 — Global food systems are putting more food – and more nutritious food – within within the reach of more people than ever before. But what are the outcomes for human and environmental health? For nutrition and equity? Frankly it’s a mixed picture. Food systems have evolved all over the world to crank out sufficient calories […]

Can the White House Nutrition Conference Help?

August 25, 2022 — Perhaps you’ve heard. Next month, the White House will host a new conference on hunger, nutrition, and health. The goal of this conference is promising: “End hunger and increase healthy eating and physical activity by 2030, so that fewer Americans experience diet-related diseases like diabetes, obesity, and hypertension.” We like the implicit acknowledgement that obesity […]

Mercy and Grace at Heart in the American Dream

July 4, 2022 — We like to think of America as a place of mercy and grace. In America the Beautiful, Katharine Lee Bates calls on God to shed his grace on this country that celebrates its birth today. But reflecting on these words and current expressions of public values about health and wellbeing, we have to wonder. How […]

Health Equity in Employer Health Plans for Obesity

April 23, 2022 — The buzzwords are flying. Diversity, equity, and inclusion is such a common theme that all you have to say is “DEI” and people will nod solemnly. The same goes for social determinants of health – SDOH. However, the Northeast Business Group on Health (NEBGH) has gone further to connect the two and identify some real […]