This World Obesity Day (4 March), the focus is on changing systems to support healthier lives.
With experts predicting that by 2035, 1 in 4 people globally will be living with obesity, it’s important to understand new obesity treatments, including medications, surgical options and lifestyle management.
Another aspect of providing effective care in this area is understanding what obesity actually means — having a diagnostic criteria — and the Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology Obesity Commission has proposed new diagnostic criteria to help tailor treatment plans to individual needs.
“With the new criteria proposed by The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology Obesity Commission we finally have a medically meaningful way of diagnosing obesity, meaning we can tailor the treatment plan according to the patient’s needs,” says Monash University’s Professor Wendy Brown highlighting the importance of a medically meaningful definition of obesity to improve treatment outcomes.
“With obesity affecting more than one billion people world-wide, it is critical that we continue research into better options for both treatment and prevention,” she says.
“We also need to make effective treatments such as medications and bariatric surgery more widely available as at the moment, they are very difficult to source in the public sector.”
For pharmacy assistants, this means understanding the role of new obesity treatments — including medications and bariatric surgery, which Professor Brown describes as safe and effective in Australia.
“Our recent research showing that bariatric surgery in Australia is relatively safe should also reassure patients, their loved ones and payers such as government and insurers that bariatric surgery is safe, effective and delivers great health improvement,” says Professor Brown.
“The safety of bariatric surgery means we can safely offer people a way to lose and keep off a substantial amount of weight, offering an opportunity to reverse or improve many health problems.
“Usually they will have tried other ways of losing weight prior to being offered surgery.”
Pharmacy assistants can play a key role in supporting customers seeking support around weight loss by providing information on available treatments and lifestyle changes, encouraging medication compliance for any weight management prescriptions, providing a safe space for conversations around weight loss, and referring customers on to the pharmacist or other healthcare professionals for ongoing management.
For more information on how your pharmacy can take action this World Obesity Day, visit, worldobesityday.org.
