April 9, 2020 — Health disparities are an ever-present feature of American healthcare. Money, race, and ethnicity have long been deciding factors in who lives and who dies. Chronic diseases have their greatest impact on black, Hispanic, and economically disadvantaged communities. Prevalence is higher. But access to treatment is lower. It’s equally true for diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. […]
April 3, 2020 — New Orleans is in a world of hurt right now. That’s because COVID-19, obesity, disparities, and denial have come together and contributed to a grotesque catastrophe. The city leads all other cities in the U.S. on deaths per capita from COVID-19. Obesity and the complications of untreated obesity are important factors. As of yesterday, out […]
March 31, 2020 — The obvious legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic will be millions of lost lives around the world. In the U.S., we’re now hearing that “only” 100,000 lives lost will amount to a big success. But beyond the acute trauma of lives lost, we must consider the possibility of post traumatic stress for all of us dealing […]
March 26, 2020 — Perhaps we’re moving on from hoarding toilet paper in response to the coronavirus pandemic. We see nothing wrong with cleanliness. But new purchase trends point to a more nostalgic focus. In addition, it might be more nourishing. Plants and seeds for vegetable gardens are becoming hot items now. Maybe all this talk about the depression […]
March 24, 2020 — Risk is an abstraction. It’s invisible. So people have a tough time wrapping their heads around questions of risk. How immediate is the risk? Is it big? Does it affect me? Am I putting others in danger? These are just a few of the questions that shape how we think about knowing our risks. As […]
March 21, 2020 — Obesity is a complex, chronic disease. However, it’s one that’s easy to ignore, because it burns slowly into a person’s health status. The problem isn’t immediate. It usually lies in the distant future – with long-term risks. That’s true enough, until those long-term risks come into short-term focus. Right now, this is precisely what is […]
March 19, 2020 — We have a grand natural experiment underway – a huge lifestyle intervention. Suddenly, hundreds of millions of people are living a more confined lifestyle. We have no more third place, no commute to work, only the home place. So physical activity and nutrition patterns will change. Likewise, social dynamics will change, too. But we have […]
March 17, 2020 — A pandemic such as COVID-19 has a way of raising difficult issues to confront. Questions about who’s at risk also raise issues about stigma and bias. On top of that, when the pandemic overruns our capacity for healthcare, triage becomes a reality. In Italy, physicians on the frontlines of this pandemic are facing difficult decisions […]
March 16, 2020 — Two things are now very apparent about the coronavirus epidemic. First, it affects all of us. But second, the health affects are wildly different for different people. For many people, the symptoms are mild, sometimes even negligible. However, it can also be deadly – especially for people older than 60 or people who have other […]
March 13, 2020 — Through the last four decades of relentlessly rising obesity, we’ve had two clinical strategies in play. The first approach – arguably dominant – has been to overlook obesity and merely treat the complications as they appear. The other is intensive behavioral treatment. But clearly, neither of these have been adequate. The burden of chronic diseases […]
