January 30, 2025 — A new paper in JAMA Network Open documents just how dizzy the pace of change in prescribing for obesity care has been in the last seven years. Prescriptions for obesity medicines have doubled. Phentermine prescribing has grown – it’s generic, cheap, and effective. Even now, it accounts for almost half of obesity medicine prescriptions. But […]
September 21, 2023 — Perhaps we should not be surprised. Because the demand for GLP-1 agonists to treat obesity is not the only thing outstripping supply. It seems that the demand for physicians with a certification in obesity medicine is also having a surge. A record number of physicians have applied to take the certification exam this year – […]
February 1, 2023 — After years of having not much to offer people suffering from the health effects of obesity, healthcare providers find themselves climbing a learning curve in obesity medicine. The pressure is here because the options for medical care of obesity have leapt forward recently. Minimally invasive bariatric surgery can offer dramatic improvements in health. Advanced medicines […]
January 8, 2022 — Ten years ago, the American Board of Obesity Medicine was not yet certifying physicians in this specialty. Today, obesity medicine is one of the fastest growing medical specialties in the U.S. A total of 5,242 physicians hold this certification. This is indeed good. But the bad news is that it is far from adequate. That […]
July 23, 2018 — Unfortunately, this is a conversation that doesn’t happen very often. By this, we mean talking to your healthcare provider about obesity care. In fact, Andrew Stokes and colleagues found that only about ten percent of people with obesity talk to any healthcare provider about it. Only four percent actually talk to a doctor. And talking […]
June 29, 2018 — Yesterday, we received a very welcome bolt of good news. Suddenly, the outlook for training a new generation of obesity medicine physicians looks much brighter. The Obesity Society and the Obesity Medicine Association have come together to launch the Obesity Medicine Fellowship Development Program. The goal is to build the framework for training more physicians […]
January 6, 2017 — Today’s post comes with our gratitude from Katherine Duncan, the first fellow in obesity medicine in the McGovern Medical School of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. She offers a personal perspective on obesity medicine physicians learning to practice this emerging specialty. I discovered early in my medical training that I wanted to […]
July 16, 2015 — The options for evidence-based obesity care are growing faster now than at any time in recent memory. And in this context, it’s especially jarring to hear a physician say there’s not much a doctor can do for people with obesity. But this is what we heard recently: When will we stop blaming doctors for what they […]
July 12, 2015 — Last Monday, we wrote about an article in the New York Times chock-full of cheap shots at people who devote their medical careers to caring for people living with obesity. We expected that most people would accept that biased reporting at face value and go right along with their faux scandal. We were wrong. The […]
July 6, 2015 — The New York Times describes a booming business in weight management because the Affordable Care Act has health insurance paying doctors to deal with obesity. Through anecdotes and interviews with people who have something to sell, they paint a vaguely disturbing picture of flourishing “for-profit diet clinics” that operate on “the fringe of the medical establishment.” […]
