Posts Tagged ‘patient-centered care’

The Urgent Need for Action on Weight Bias in Healthcare

October 25, 2024 — At the very outset of this week’ s International Weight Bias Summit in Montreal, one thing was plain see. Weight bias in healthcare is an area to focus on for much needed action. How can we accept this? People seeking care for obesity and health conditions that may (or may not) be related to it […]

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 […]

The Essential Need for Person-Centered Care in Obesity

August 12, 2024 — It is remarkable that actual caring can be hard to find in healthcare. This is especially true for persons living with obesity. But it can make a significant difference for well-being and satisfaction with care. New research by Paige Crompvoets and colleagues offers us valuable insights into this concern, examining the relationship of person-centered care […]

The #1 Reason Doctors Treat Patients Poorly: Weight

August 8, 2024 — New survey research from YouGov serves up a timely reminder of the problem with weight bias in healthcare. The research, fielded in late June, found that most American adults (53%) have an unfavorable view of the U.S. healthcare system. About one in three persons report negative treatment because of their identity. And weight is the […]

ECO2024: Tailoring and Tapering Obesity Medicines

May 12, 2024 — A pair of studies with semaglutide at ECO2024 in Venice goes straight to the heart of some core questions about advanced obesity medicines. Does everyone need the full, maximum dose to get good results? Will everyone have to keep taking that full dose to keep obesity under control? The answer to both questions is no. […]

In Defense of a Person’s Concern About Gaining Weight

March 25, 2024 — Weight neutral approaches to health and healthcare are the subject of well-deserved attention. The World Obesity Federation recently published a position statement on recognizing and reducing weight stigma. One of nine recommendations was to “engage in weight-neutral health promotion.” But what does this really mean? How should a healthcare provider respond to a patient’s concern […]

Pediatric Obesity: Making the Leap from Knowing to Doing

February 26, 2024 — We are in the midst of a great leap forward in pediatric obesity – from knowing to doing what we should in caring for the young persons with this chronic disease. ATPO 2024 at the University of Minnesota Center for Pediatric Obesity Medicine (CPOM) last week made this clear. We know much more about how […]

Drug Studies, Labels, and Dosing Only for Lean Persons?

November 8, 2023 — Public health experts have long been accounting for it. People are living in larger bodies. Better than 40% of U.S. adults have a body weight in the range of obesity. But new reporting from JoNel Aleccia for the Associated Press tells us that pharma and the FDA are not yet accounting for this fact. It’s […]

The Twisted Path to Better Obesity Medicines

August 18, 2023 — We are clearly on a path toward better obesity medicines, but reflecting on decades of work on this, clearly, the path is twisted. Describing this path, Gina Kolata writes: “Every so often a drug comes along that has the potential to change the world. Medical specialists say the latest to offer that possibility are the […]

Language Frames Our Response to Obesity

June 14, 2023 — Recent advances in the scientific understanding of obesity has led to more frequent public rejection of explicit weight bias, but implicit bias and stigma remains a serious impediment to health. Language is a potent tool that frames our understanding of obesity. But too often, even in scientific publications, it reflects bias against people with obesity […]