Policy
STOP generates reports and guidance that provide essential obesity-related information for policymakers, legislators, and other decision-makers. Click the topics below to explore this content.
Coverage for Obesity Care
- State-by-State Analysis of Obesity Coverage
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In 2021, the STOP Obesity Alliance conducted a state-by-state analysis of State Employee Health Plan health care coverage for plan year 2020/2021 for obesity prevention and treatment, including preventive services and counseling, nutrition counseling, drug therapy, and bariatric surgery content.
Comprehensive Obesity Benefit
- COB and Checklist
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The present landscape of obesity care coverage is piecemeal, and providers frequently cite inconsistent and/or inadequate reimbursement for obesity-related services as barriers to delivering appropriate care. The STOP Obesity Alliance has outlined what we consider to be the core components of an obesity benefit package that are essential for effective and evidence-based treatment of obesity. Updated 09.01.2021
- A Comprehensive Obesity Benefit as a Guide for Health Plans
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The need to confront the obesity epidemic and its impact on employers requires a serious look at how we address the treatment of obesity. This article focuses on the core components of obesity care and the need for employers to offer a comprehensive obesity benefit (COB) as part of employee insurance coverage.
- New Publication: Benefits managers’ attitudes toward obesity treatment coverage
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New research looks at insurance benefits managers' attitudes towards obesity treatment coverage. Benefits managers are a key stakeholder group with the ability to advocate for insurance coverage of a variety of treatments for obesity. "Findings suggest that understanding obesity as a condition caused by biological factors as opposed to personal responsibility and behavior is associated with greater support for coverage of all its treatments." The STOP Obesity Alliance's Comprehensive Obesity Benefit was used to develop survey questions about the participant’s organization’s obesity benefits.
Read: Benefits managers’ attitudes toward obesity treatment coverage
Proposed Standard of Care
- Report
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During 2018, the STOP Obesity Alliance convened a series of roundtable meetings with relevant stakeholders to deliberate about who should provide obesity care, where obesity care should be delivered and what care should be provided by whom. It was our goal to develop a standard of care to enable the patient to move within the continuum of care, as well as to provide assurance that patients have access to appropriate levels of care, regardless of where they enter the healthcare system. The product of our meetings was a practical, tangible, measurable and simple standard of care for the treatment of adult obesity, published in the July 2019 issue of Obesity. No comparable standard addresses the spectrum of care that persons with obesity need to address their disease.
Changing the Dialogue:
Obesity Drug Outcome Measures
- Report
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In 2011 and 2012, STOP convened several roundtables with stakeholders, including FDA, to transform the process used to evaluate pharmacotherapy and developed a consensus report that explored challenges in the development and approval of obesity drugs.
