ObesityWeek welcomes attendees to help ‘eradicate treatment barriers’
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ObesityWeek will be held Nov. 1 to 4 in San Diego, with a broad theme of eradicating treatment barriers in endocrinology.
Online access to meeting sessions will be available with a 2-day delay.
Healio spoke with Kelly C. Allison, PhD, program planning chair for ObesityWeek and professor and director at University of Pennsylvania's Center for Weight and Eating Disorders at the Perelman School of Medicine, ahead of the meeting to highlight specific topics of interest, important sessions and what attendees can expect at this year’s meeting.
Treatment barriers
ObesityWeek, unlike many other more targeted endocrinology meetings, will provide a breadth of sessions and topics spanning basic science to population health and information and data on new treatments and neuroimaging studies.
“Our president, Dr. Dan Bessesen, is really intent on trying to move the science forward, and how to best disseminate the treatments that we have,” Allison said. “And we have some pretty effective treatments at this point, but sometimes insurance doesn't cover them and sometimes the patients are not sold on how effective or safe they are. Sometimes patients don't know that those treatments are out there, and how they could access them. So, the meeting is trying to highlight sessions that will start to break down those barriers for more effective dissemination of the treatments that we do have.”
A presidential plenary session will kick off the meeting by touching on some topics related to eradicating treatment barriers and important areas of obesity research and treatment. Other sessions will go deeper into these topics and offer ways to eliminate barriers to patients.
In the interactive schedule for ObesityWeek, attendees can search for specific talks or sessions related to the theme of the meeting as well as other subspecialty topics, including pediatric obesity, diabetes-related complications and many more.
Regarding important trials and studies to be presented at the meeting, Allison noted that many endocrinologists will find some breaking studies on obesity medications and oral paper presentations on glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists and glucagon-like peptide-1 gastric inhibitory polypeptide receptor agonists of interest.
“The other big theme that we have at our meeting this year is that we were really lucky to have a lot of updates about primary prevention and pediatric obesity. So, we have a couple of sessions, from the CORD studies, the Childhood Obesity Research Demonstration project.,” Allison said. “People who were involved in making these new pediatric treatment guidelines will be talking about that process and about the actual guidelines.”
These talks on pediatric obesity will be held during two different sessions on Thursday, Nov. 3.
Mentoring opportunities
Along with regular daily sessions on a variety of endocrinology topics of interest, Allison said, ObesityWeek will be offering plenty of mentoring opportunities for younger attendees and early trainees. On the online portal, attendees can sign up to be a mentor to others and identify on their profile if they wish to be mentored. Those interested can reach out directly to one another to meet during in San Diego or afterward. ObesityWeek will also be distributing prizes to attendees who meet up with one another to encourage further mentorship.
On Thursday afternoon, there will also be a chance for mentors and mentees to meet during coffee with the professors.
“Most folks who have talks have signed up to sit at those tables and talk with anybody that would like to talk with them further about their presentation or about their labs,” Allison said.
On the program, attendees will also see an early professional group that meets up with lightning talks and receptions, Allison said. This is an active group and those who joined the ObesityWeek Society and are early professionals are eligible to sign up to have ongoing virtual sessions with mentors throughout the year.
The Healio team will be onsite in San Diego during ObesityWeek. Follow our coverage of the meeting here and on Twitter at @EndocrineToday.
For more information:
Kelly C. Allison, PhD, can be reached at kca@pennmedicine.upenn.edu.
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