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Obesity consensus statement hopes to address gaps in knowledge, support comprehensive approach
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WASHINGTON – While progress continues to be made regularly in the area of obesity and its designation as a disease was a turning point, there are still areas to target to better treat patients with obesity, and the consensus statement to be announced today hopes to address these gaps in knowledge.
“We have an evidence base that we can use to support the evolution of a more comprehensive approach to the obesity problem,” W. Timothy Garvey, MD, chair of the conference, said in concluding the discussion yesterday. “Whatever affects one of our pillars and one of our constituencies affects others as we go forward and try to solve the problem of obesity in our country.”
The moderators of the pillar breakout sessions agreed on many of the gaps to be addressed, ranging from genetics to modification of environment; transition of overweight to obesity to the impact of other medications on obesity.
Experts called for continued research to provide evidence of success of true health improvement.
“For many years, people only looked at this as a cosmetic issue and they were only concerned about the appearance side and not the medical side,” Yehuda Handelsman, MD, FACP, FACE, FNLA, a member of the writing committee, said. “There were no studies, no outcome data. The problem I foresee now is that there is no money to do those studies. I think our gap of knowledge is going to be a gap for a long time. I would like to know how to manage my patients and utilize the modalities I have available in a more concrete fashion.”
Jonathan D. Leffert, MD, FACP, FACE, ECNU, agreed, “Our pillars were frustrated by the fact that we just didn’t have enough evidence now to affect the future. Without that, the funding sources and all of those other important variables, the reimbursement does not follow.”
According to Daniel Einhorn, MD, FACP, FACE, the reimbursement model might come first in order to conform to a more traditional disease model.
“Until the reimbursement climate is willing to acknowledge at least certain individuals for standard disease reimbursement care and standard disease-specific therapies, I think it’s going to be very difficult to move forward,” Einhorn said. “A big part of our initiative at this conference is to reform the reimbursement climate and hopefully to turn it into a disease model. Once we have that, clinicians, patients become creative. They begin to see patterns. They begin to understand how to use the tools at hand. All of the sudden, you’re crowdsourcing on a grand scale.”
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Presented at: The AACE/ACE Consensus Conference on Obesity; March 23-24, 2014; Washington, D.C.
Disclosures: The consensus conference is supported by Covidien, Eisai, Ethicon, Novo Nordisk, Takeda and Vivus.