More than 93 million Americans currently have obesity, and obesity rates have doubled among adults in the last 20 years. It’s time to change the way we care about obesity. With obesity on the rise, our organization, alongside other organizations, must attack this disease from multiple angles and unite to overhaul the treatment of obesity. At the STOP Obesity Alliance, we recognize this challenge and the important role we can play.
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Medical professionals are not minted overnight. Health professions grow and transform over decades, not months. While policies and strategies to address America’s chronic diseases shape the healthcare workforce, they are also shaped by it.
A growing body of evidence indicates that obesity has a detrimentalimpact on reproductive potential in women. In addition to reduced fertility, maternal pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI), excessive gestational weight gain, and postpartum weight retention are collectively associated with adverse fetal development, obstetric complications, and long-term health outcomes for mothers and their offspring.
June 2018 marked the tenth annual National Employee Wellbeing Month (NEWM). NEWM spotlights the workplace’s role in helping to create healthier, happier employees. The month highlights how wellbeing-minded organizations lead to more productive, engaged workforces and create magnetic company cultures that drive recruitment and retention.
Earlier this year, we published findings from a 2016 national survey of family practitioners (FPs), internists, obstetricians/gynecologists (OB-GYNs), and nurse practitioners (NPs) (total n = 1,506) indicating that most health care professionals (HCPs) lack basic knowledge of current guidelines for the non-surgical treatment of obesity.
Language matters. The words we use to discuss health and disease directly impact beliefs, behaviors, and experiences.
Obesity is characterized by the accumulation of excess body fat (adiposity) that presents a risk to health. Although excess body weight is often associated with excess adiposity, obesity is a complex disease that should not be conflated with high body weight alone. The location of fat deposition is an important determinant of morbidity.
Over the past decade, researchers have explored the link between social relationships and individual health outcomes. Obesity—like food intake, depression, physical activity, and healthy behaviors—clusters within social networks.
It is likely that the proportion of cancer cases and deathsattributable to obesity will continue to rise in the U.S. and globally over the next decade. Evidence-based interventions to promote healthy weight should be incorporated into comprehensive cancer control strategies for those with and without a history of cancer.
Thank you to our STOP Obesity Alliance members and partners for your dedicated efforts to improve obesity prevention and treatment this past year. Together, we have accomplished important work in many areas that align with our STOP goals:
Employers are among the stakeholders with the most to gain from policies that foster healthy weight management. Self-reported data from the 2004-2011 National Health Interview Survey indicated that 35 million U.S. workers—one-fourth of the American workforce—were affected by obesity, but this estimate likely underestimated the true disease prevalence.
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Few U.S. health professionals are adequately trained in the prevention and management of obesity. Only 1 in 4 physicians feel prepared to effectively counsel patients on healthy eating and physical activity.
The individual challenges, costs, and overall burden of the obesity epidemic continue to require new thinking. I have begun to see young adulthood as a neglected, yet critical, period of study in the development of obesity.