Another Successful Obesity Boot Camp

I spent all of last week at the 2008 Obesity Boot Camp co-organized by the Canadian Obesity Network (CON) and the Merck-Frosst/CIHR Obesity Chair at the University of Laval, QC.

As in the two previous camps, this year's camp once again brought together some of the best and brightest students and new professionals from across Canada for over 100 hours of education and social activities (including the Tree Top Adventure, Kayaking, tour of Quebec City and the obligatory late night excursions to DD).

Overall I have no doubts that, as in previous camps, some friendships have been forged for life - both personal and professional.

For my part, I again learnt a lot from listening and interacting with the students and faculty. While there continue to be no easy solutions to obesity in sight, there certainly are reasons for optimism, seeing the enthusiasm with which the students are preparing to face the challenge of solving one of the greatest global health problem of our times.

The Canadian Obesity Network is grateful to all of the faculty and supporters who made this camp possible.

Personally, I look forward to continuing interactions with the Boot Camp Alumni over the coming months and years.

AMS
Edmonton, Alberta

2008 Obesity Boot Camp

Yesterday was the beginning of the 3rd Annual Obesity Boot Camp co-hosted by the Canadian Obesity Network (CON) and the Merck-Frosst/CIHR Obesity Chair at the University of Laval, QC. The annual Boot Camp is one of CON’s most successful capacity-building initiatives as evidenced by the continuing enthusiastic feedback from the over 50 students and new professionals who have so far attended the camp.

Contrary to what the name suggests, this is not a weight-loss camp for students challenged by excess weight (in fact given the quality of the food at the camp – keeping weight off is a challenge). Rather, the 9-day camp is a teaching and networking exercise, offered to 24 of the top young obesity researchers in the country (this year’s attendees come from 19 different universities across Canada).

This year’s Boot Camp was again kicked off by Ian Janssen from Queen’s University (Kingston, ON), who talked about the definition and epidemiology of obesity. Apart from presenting a succinct overview of the topic, he also presented some of his original research on the health costs related to obesity.

New to the camp this year was Diane Finegood, Director of the CIHR Institute of Nutrition, Metabolism and Diabetes and Professor at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, BC), who spoke on complex adaptive. Some key properties of complex systems include heterogeneity, nonlinearity, feedback, learning, evolution, stochastics, relevance of tails, interdependence and emergence.

According to Finegood, the obesity pandemic needs to be viewed as an emergent property of people living in our current obesogenic environment. Because emergent properties, by definition, emerge when parts of a system do together what they would not do by themselves, they are generally not best understood or tackled using a reductionistic approach. Thus, it would be quite difficult to reliably predict the obesity epidemic or find solutions simply by studying individual components of our environment (e.g. urban sprawl) or any single component of human biology (e.g. genetics) in isolation.

Given the complexity of the issues, her take home messages were: all individuals matter; we need to match complexity to capacity; manage expectations; establish networks and teams; create competition and feedback loops; build intersectoral trust; monitor behaviours; measure effectiveness; adopt a whole-of-government approach (no single ministry can solve the problem).

Definitely a great kick-off to the 2008 Obesity Boot Camp.

AMS
Duchesnay, Quebec

Recognising Barriers Key to Obesity Management?

Most people fail to keep off any weight they lose.

This may in part be attributable to the substantial barriers that undermine long-term obesity management strategies.

In a paper I wrote with my colleagues Marina Mauro, Valerie Taylor and Sean Whartan just out in the European Journal of Internal Medicine, we highlight the importance of recognizing and addressing these barriers before embarking on obesity treatments.

Common barriers include lack of recognition of obesity as a chronic condition, low socioeconomic status, time constraints, intimate saboteurs, and a wide range of comorbidities including mental health, sleep, chronic pain, musculoskeletal, cardiovascular, respiratory, digestive and endocrine disorders.

Furthermore, medications used to treat some of these disorders may further undermine weight-loss efforts and promote weight regain.

Unfortunately, lack of specific obesity training of health professionals, attitudes and beliefs as well as coverage and availability of obesity treatments can likewise pose important barriers.

Health professionals need to take care to identify, acknowledge and, if possible, address these barriers in order to increase patient success as well as compliance and adherence with treatments.

Failure to do so may further promote the sense of failure, low self esteem and low self efficacy already common among individuals struggling with excess weight.

I have little doubt that addressing treatment barriers can save resources and increase the prospect of long-term success.

Identifying and discussing barriers with patients has to be a routine part of obesity care.

AMS
Edmonton, Alberta

Carrying the TORCH for Obesity

Yesterday, I presented a seminar on the challenges of obesity management to the trainees of the TORCH (TomorrOw's Research Cardiovascular Health professionals) program.

TORCH is an integrated program at the Universities of Alberta and Calgary with the mission to prepare Canada's next generation of transdisciplinary cardiovascular health research leaders. TORCH trainees come from diverse areas ranging from basic sciences to medicine and surgery.

The TORCH Program was born from an initiative by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) to encourage transdisciplinary, integrative health research and to build capacity of the Canadian health research community through the development of researchers and the provision of sustained support for scientific careers in health research.

While it was evident from some of the questions that prior knowledge on obesity varied considerably amongst the participants, this was easily made up for by their interest and enthusiasm for the topic.

Clearly, the next generation of cardiovascular health researchers will benefit from greater insights into the psychosocial and biomedical causes and consequences of obesity.

I am grateful to Gary Lopaschuk (Program Director) and his colleagues for the opportunity to speak to these leaders of tomorrow.

AMS
Edmonton, Alberta