October 22, 2025 — We are most accustomed to technology bringing economic disruption. Three decades ago, it was the internet. Then smartphones and social media. Now, we obsess about the effects of artificial intelligence. But a strong case is building that obesity medicine is becoming an economic disruptor on a scale that is equal or greater than any of […]
August 10, 2025 — Sisyphus, the myth of a person condemned to a futile task of rolling a boulder uphill for eternity, has long been an apt metaphor for obesity medicine. He still is, said Donna Ryan yesterday at the Louisiana 2025 Obesity Conference in New Orleans. But the narrative has shifted dramatically, she explained. Before this shift, the […]
May 16, 2025 — This week the European Congress on Obesity drew spectacular crowds. Of course, hanging in there for the final day of any congress is a challenge, but the closing day of ECO2025 rewarded stalwarts with excellent insights into the promise of precision obesity medicine. The Genetic Contribution to Obesity Although it was not intended as a […]
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 […]
June 14, 2024 — It is unmistakable, Lee Kaplan tells us. Obesity care is evolving. But the change is painfully slow and inadequate – especially in comparison to the rapid advancement in tools for treating obesity. The slow progress is especially painful when you compare it to the progress made against HIV or COVID. In 1984, HIV was almost […]
November 27, 2023 — Truly, access to care for obesity is a tough slog. Not that it’s easy for any health condition. Obesity really is a special case, where medical care that can improve a person’s health often lies just out of reach. Bias about obesity is part of the problem. Fear of mounting medical costs is another. But […]
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 26, 2021 — It’s been eight years since the American Medical Association resolved that obesity is a complex, chronic disease. But still, the argument endures. For different reasons, some people continue to resist what they see as medicalizing obesity. So with the closing session of the YWM2021 convention, it was quite interesting to hear a discussion from two […]
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 […]
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 […]
