Posts Tagged ‘health systems’

U.S. and U.K. Health Systems Add to the Burden of Obesity

June 28, 2025 — People living with obesity face a heavy and often hidden burden – financial, physical, social, and psychological – embedded in health systems and extending far beyond health risks. A nationally representative U.S. study reveals that one in six adults with obesity struggles to afford healthcare, routinely skipping medications or even meals to manage cost. With […]

The Far-Reaching Effects of GLP-1 Medicines at Nutrition 2025

June 4, 2025 — It is fascinating. Nutrition 2025 concluded yesterday in Orlando and even though the conference is all about nutrition research, an intense interest in the interaction of GLP-1 medicines with nutrition was a theme in the meeting from its very start all the way to the end. At the end, with two distinguished obesity researchers, Randy […]

Explosive Growth in Extremely Severe Obesity (Under the Radar)

April 28, 2025 — Happy headlines late last year told us that obesity recently “dipped” in the U.S., perhaps because of medicines like semaglutide and tirzepatide. Those headlines presented a partial and misleading truth that a new analysis in Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology explains more fully. Yes, the prevalence of overweight and mild obesity has seemingly plateaued. But this […]

New Canadian Pediatric Obesity Guidelines Meet Scarce Options

April 14, 2025 — The first update to Canadian guidelines for pediatric obesity in two decades is out today. The authors grounded them in the best available science. They crafted them with the values of children and families at the center of their process. In short, these are very solid guidelines. But there’s just one little problem. The scarce […]

World Obesity Day: Better Systems for Healthier Lives

March 4, 2025 — It is about time. The world is waking up to the realization that rising global obesity is not a problem of personal failures. Rather, it is the product of systems with the unintended effect of promoting obesity while denying people care for this chronic disease. At the heart of World Obesity Day 2025 is the […]

Skimming Profits, Sowing Disparities, and Dimming Prospects

February 12, 2025 — The revolution in obesity care brought on by semaglutide and tirzepatide is beginning to look a little shaky, says Tina Reed on Axios. The U.S. healthcare system is skimming profits from them, thus sowing disparities, and quite possibly dimming the prospects for broad gains in health. Peter Antall is Chief Medical Officer at the digital […]

Fixing the Mistake of Health Systems Closed to Obesity Care

September 28, 2024 — Since forever, health systems have been closed to the need for obesity care. While obesity prevalence tripled, care providers, health plans, and even government policy doubled down on a simple response. “Your obesity is not our problem. It’s yours. Go away, eat less, move more, and come back when you’ve lost 25, 50, or 100 […]

How Do We Feel About 40,000 Unnecessary Obesity Deaths?

September 26, 2024 — It was an interesting day that we spent talking with health policy makers in the Senate yesterday. Refreshing in a way, because the conversations about obesity are so different from the conversations we were having just a few years ago. Not a single person raised the false issue of “personal responsibility” for “being obese.” Only […]

Obesity Care at Scale Will Profoundly Change Health Systems

September 6, 2024 — Think about it. Profound change is coming to healthcare and health systems because of the imperative for obesity care at scale. Right now, we are seeing only a faint glimmer of the changes that lie ahead. That’s because the biggest struggles with this change are very basic. Lilly and Novo Nordisk are straining to produce […]

Welcome to Disparity Health, Where Health Is Everything

July 11, 2024 — “Not everything is healthcare,” writes Chris Pope in an essay for the Wall Street Journal, questioning  policy advocates who focus on disparity in social determinants of health. In his commentary, he expresses doubt about diverting money from healthcare to other social programs: “Social theories of health have become so popular because they allow states, nonprofit […]