July 4, 2023 — JAMA Pediatrics has a pair of new papers today on the cost of childhood obesity. One of them adds up the medical expenses incurred by youth aged 2 to 19. The other editorializes about determining the value of interventions to manage weight. Both of them focus on pricing childhood obesity in the present while discounting […]
May 22, 2023 — Despite a great deal of progress in recognizing weight bias and stigma, many challenges remain in overcoming it. Explicit expressions of weight bias no longer get a free pass. So they are becoming less common. But implicit weight bias is as strong as ever. Perhaps even more challenging is the weight bias that people direct […]
May 17, 2023 — The current sensation around advanced medicines for obesity all too often focuses on a single outcome – weight loss. On the opening day of ECO2023, a symposium by the SQOT project reminds us that outcomes other than weight loss can matter to patients quite a lot. In reality, the reason that many people seek obesity […]
November 1, 2022 — Today marks the actual opening of ObesityWeek 2022 in San Diego. So to help you wade through the many hundreds for research studies being presented this week, here is a list of the top ten abstracts at ObesityWeek. Make no mistake. This is a highly subjective list, but it’s ours. Every one of you reading […]
April 14, 2022 — So much attention goes into obesity for children and young persons that one might wonder if it’s much of a concern for older adults. A new study in BMC Geriatrics offers good insight. Mild and moderate obesity might not have much of an effect on a older person’s lifespan, though severe obesity does. But regardless […]
September 7, 2021 — Care delayed is care denied. The truth of this is obvious in emergency medicine. In the case of a stroke or a traumatic injury, unnecessary delays in care lead to immediate harm. But with a chronic, progressive disease, the harm can be more subtle. Add in systemic bias and delayed care can become quite a […]
August 25, 2021 — September is at our doorstep and it is National Childhood Obesity Month. In the course of this month, you will hear lots about healthy eating and active living. This has been the dominant theme since this observance began. The implicit message is to urge families and youth to heal themselves. Not a bad idea, but […]
August 18, 2021 — The lived experience of obesity has many dimensions, but one of the most troubling is being invisible. Melanie Bahlke, a remarkable patient advocate from Frankfurt, Germany, explains it beautifully: “I am used to being talked about more than having people talk to me. For everyone I am something different and I am rarely what I […]
July 27, 2021 — The gap between facts and feelings about bariatric surgery never ceases to amaze. In 2016, we were presenting at a CDC conference in Atlanta, when a prominent family physician interrupted. He wanted to tell us that surgery usually leads to patients regaining all their weight. Or too often, he said, death. We responded by asking […]
April 9, 2021 — Nostrums for overcoming obesity litter the landscape of health policy. “Obesity is preventable,” says the World Health Organization. We like the can-do spirit this reflects. Yet the how-to details are missing – or at least details with evidence to support them. Instead we have glittering generalities and beautiful metaphors. WHO recommends making healthy choices the […]
