PHILADELPHIA, April 1, 2025—Obesity is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality with wide-ranging health consequences that cross-cut many medical specialties. Despite the emergence of effective and promising new therapies, many barriers to comprehensive obesity care remain. As part of their commitment to improving obesity care, the American College of Physicians (ACP) and its Council of Subspecialty Societies (CSS) held a summit in Fall of 2023, to identify barriers and opportunities for collaborative action in the domains of physician education; healthcare policy and care delivery; and addressing weight bias. This report, Unifying Efforts to Empower Equitable Obesity Care: Synopsis of an American College of Physicians and Council of Subspecialty Societies Summit, was published today in Annals of Internal Medicine, and summarizes the summit proceedings and post-summit efforts.
Key themes of the summit centered on knowledge, advocacy, action, and compassion and the need for culture change and paradigm shifts in obesity care. To effectively engage clinicians in obesity management, ACP-CSS recognized that improvements in three major domains were critical: physician education; healthcare policy and care delivery; and addressing weight bias.
The goals of the summit were to better understand how to address these barriers and to foster collaborative efforts among professional clinical organizations to develop and implement solutions. Data presented at the summit underscored the rise and high prevalence of obesity in adults in various demographic groups, attributed often to rise in less healthy eating and sedentary lifestyle; changes in food production, marketing of affordable but less healthy foods, and mixed messages about what constitutes a healthy diet; the rise in technology; and changes in the fixed environment. The summit acknowledged that these changes disproportionately affect the socioeconomically disadvantaged.
Summit participants also discussed that obesity treatment paradigms have often centered around intensive behavioral lifestyle change interventions that were only modestly effective, difficult to implement and sustain (especially for the socioeconomically disadvantaged), and poorly reimbursed and underfunded.
Further, the lack of medical education and post-graduate training about obesity and nutrition was acknowledged-- resulting in competency gaps in the current clinical workforce. Obesity is also often viewed as being primarily within the purview of general internal medicine and other primary care clinicians whose workforce numbers are dwindling. Finally, despite advances in our understanding of the causes and contributors of obesity, weight bias and stigma remain.
The summit concluded by highlighting priorities and specific steps for how medical professional societies might collaborate to improve clinical education, optimize obesity care delivery, and reduce stigma and bias. Recommendations for next steps include:
- Leveraging and improving already available educational and clinical resources;
- Developing obesity education and care standards that incorporate patients’ perspectives and address social determinants of health;
- Developing community and public, private partnerships to improve access and public awareness and;
- Coordinating messaging and policy advocacy efforts to mitigate the longstanding obesity epidemic.
Summit participants also identified metrics to evaluate outcomes in these areas.
“Obesity is a highly prevalent issue for patients and for physicians to understand and treat,” said Isaac O. Opole, President, ACP. “With the advent of increasingly effective pharmacotherapies for weight loss, ACP recognized that now is the time to foster collaborations with partner organizations to help clinicians play a more central role in addressing obesity. As an internal medicine physician on the frontlines of patient care, I look forward to advancing knowledge and information on obesity care.”
ACP has been and continues to be active in providing resources and disseminating high-quality research for internal medicine physicians and the medical community through ACP’s Advancing Equitable Chronic Obesity Care initiative which includes physician education and resources (e.g. ACP’s Obesity Management Hub, Annals’ Overweight and Obesity Collection and In the Clinic series on Obesity, and ACP/Annals Virtual forum on Overweight and Obesity); advocacy for conducive public and healthcare payment policies; and engagement with patients and communities at the population level.
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About the American College of Physicians
The American College of Physicians is the largest medical specialty organization in the United States with members in more than 172 countries worldwide. ACP membership includes 161,000 internal medicine physicians, related subspecialists, and medical students. Internal medicine physicians are specialists who apply scientific knowledge and clinical expertise to the diagnosis, treatment, and compassionate care of adults across the spectrum from health to complex illness. Follow ACP on X, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and LinkedIn.
Contact: Andrew Hachadorian, 215 351 2514, ahachadorian@acponline.org