Counseling the Community Health Councils on Obesity

Last evening I gave a presentation to members of the Strathcona County Community Health Council (CHC). The CHCs are advisory bodies appointed by the Capital Health Board, to provide community perspectives that support Board business planning and strategic direction.

Council members are volunteers with strong community linkages. Most have been involved with local groups or organizations where they receive community input on various health issues.

Input from CHCs helps the Board to update its business plan and meet the health needs of people in the Capital Health region.

Thus, informing the CHC members about the importance of the Weight Wise program and its relevance to improving the health of their communities is of utmost importance.

As anticipated, the interest in Weight Wise was keen. Not only were they interested in learning about my vision for the program but also in the challenges and possible solutions to the obesity crisis.

I emphasized that Weight Wise is in fact not a single program but rather a whole suite of programs and initiatives addressing both obesity prevention and treatments in the Capital Health Region and beyond.

I spoke about the unique opportunities here in Edmonton, where we can indeed create a seamless obesity program that provides services across the continuum of care.

I spoke to the need of providing obesity care to the over 250,000 people in the region already clinically obese and the over 25,000 with severe obesity.

I also spoke about the many excellent researchers here at the University of Alberta already working on important issues relevant to obesity prevention and care.

My guess is that my presentation was well received - indeed, I hope it was.

It will take all the support we can get to create a climate in which spending money on obesity prevention and treatments is not the exception but rather the rule.

AMS

25,000 Reasons to Promote Bariatric Care

This evening, I presented my vision for the Weight Wise Program to the Capital Health Board of Directors. I set the stage by presenting recent data on the prevalence of obesity.

Extrapolating from the most recent available data, based on roughly a population of 1,000,000 in the Capital Health region, I estimated that around 500,000 or 50% of the population have overweight or obesity, around 250,000 or 25% have frank obesity and around 25,000 or 2.5% have severe or morbid obesity.

Not surprisingly, the numbers clearly shocked my listeners. While everyone was of course well aware that there was an obesity problem, it is probably fair to say that few fully appreciated how HUGE the problem really is.

My comment that at the current rate of obesity surgery in the region, it would take us several centuries to operate on everyone who is morbidly obese today, was visibly sobering.

Just to clarify, I am not a surgeon. I have nothing personally to gain from promoting obesity surgery. Indeed, I much rather wished we had medical treatments that could do the job - but I have to concede that at least for now, obesity surgery is by far the best option for eligible patients.

Believe me, if there was a way to avoid surgery, I'd be all for it. But just as I've had to accept that dialysis and transplantation are the best options for patients with kidney failure, I have to accept that bariatric surgery is currently the best treatment for severe obesity.

More power to anyone who can manage their massive excess weight by radically overhauling their lifestyles and sticking with it - realistically, however, I am painfully aware that this will always be a small minority - most will require medical and/or surgical help.

Denying this help is not an option - morbid obesity is NOT a rare disease!

AMS