January 25, 2023 — When a medical condition starts to define how we see ourselves, the conversation about it gets messy. Is this a health concern? Or is it about appearance and vanity? Is concern about obesity something for the few and the wealthy? Or something that profoundly affects the health of a large segment of the population across […]
September 26, 2019 — A new systematic review in the International Journal of Obesity offers a global view on the state of obesity medicine education. It’s definitely a good news, bad news story. The good is that we have plenty of reason to believe that obesity medicine education helps. But the bad news is that the current extent of […]
September 24, 2019 — A professor of pediatrics was visiting patients with her medical students. They saw a patient, a teen with class III obesity that had begun at a very early age. One of her students asked, don’t her parents know their daughter needs to eat healthy and stay active? Another said, it’s terrible what the food industry […]
June 23, 2019 — Obesity presents many problems. But two of them rise to the top: access to care and bias. Yesterday, at the Harvard Blackburn obesity course, Caroline Apovian reminded us why. Too often, people with obesity endure a lifetime of derision and medical neglect. With facts and case histories, she painted a searing picture of the suffering […]
March 19, 2019 — Here’s a jolt of reality from research at the NYU School of Medicine. Among the students who are ready to go into the clinic for their clerkships, most of them believe that controllable factors are very important causes of obesity. But most of them think that biological and genetic factors are not very important. This […]
November 21, 2018 — Extra pounds sneak up on you. A few cookies here, a second helping of gravy there, and the next thing you know the waistband of your favorite pair of pants has grown inexplicably sharp. I found myself in this position a couple of years back, and turned to the system I’ve always used when my […]
August 13, 2018 — My father instilled in me a desire and a curiosity about diagnosis. It started with me watching him conduct autopsies as Medical Examiner of Bergen County, New Jersey. I accompanied him to the scene of countless murders and unsolved crimes, witnessing him examine each body for clues that could reveal the cause of a person’s […]
January 20, 2017 — Is your doctor spending more time with your electronic medical record than he’s spending with you? If so, you’re not alone. But you’re also probably not receiving the most effective care possible. A growing body of evidence suggests that genuine empathetic caring may be essential for good health outcomes. Empathetic caring is especially scarce for […]
March 18, 2016 — If you just look at the data, you might think it’s seldom that physicians see obesity in routine clinical practice. CDC has issued a new report on physician office visits for obesity by adults in the U.S. Given that 38% of adults in the U.S. have obesity and obesity is widely recognized to be the […]
April 24, 2013 — Doctors who want to provide medical care for obesity — before it leads to a litany of chronic diseases — face a medical system that is stacked against them. Payers will rarely pay for medical care relating solely to obesity. So those who want to be paid for their work more often address the complications […]
