Ideal Protein’s Doctors Fighting Obesity Campaign: Combatting the Obesity Epidemic

In this blog, Scott Public Relations has chosen to spotlight one of the major health threats in America and the world, and how doctors are mobilizing to combat it.

Obesity—and the general concern about “excess weight”— affects 70 percent of American adults.[1] Weight problems can be among the most chronic and challenging to address, with many potential causes and requiring an integrated lifestyle approach to overcome. With so many Americans battling these issues, greater attention is now being paid to the critical role of nutrition and healthy lifestyle management, combined with the use of physician counseling to lose weight.

Recognizing that physicians should have a greater role in helping their patients to lose weight, Ideal Protein, a provider of a medically developed protocol for weight management, recently launched the Doctors Fighting Obesity campaign to provide a public message on its nutrition and healthy lifestyle management approach.

Given the guidance from the American Medical Association (AMA) recognizing obesity as a disease, Ideal Protein and the Doctors Fighting Obesity initiative are encouraging physicians to counsel their patients on weight loss to help decrease the risk for chronic conditions associated with excess weight, including: Type 2 diabetes; high blood pressure; early mortality; stroke risk; some cancers; degenerative joint disease; joint pain and immobility; sleep apnea; non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and metabolic syndrome.[2]

The Doctors Fighting Obesity campaign launched on the heels of the June 2016 announcement of findings from a Nielsen Strategic Health Perspectives survey sponsored by the Council of Accountable Physician Practices (CAPP), an affiliate of the AMGA Foundation and a coalition of visionary medical group and health system leaders.

The survey data shows that while 52 percent of physicians report that they recommend patients enroll in a weight loss program, only 5 percent of those patients polled say they heard this message. Additionally, 90 percent of physicians report recommending better eating habits, while only 19 percent of patients say their doctors gave them that advice.

Through the Doctors Fighting Obesity campaign, Ideal Protein aims to provide physicians with useful information about the Ideal Protein Protocol so they can broaden their weight loss offerings to their patients and consequently help them reduce the risks associated with many chronic illnesses. Doctors report that while utilizing the Ideal Protein Protocol, as their patients lose weight they see reductions in conditions associated with weight such as hypertension, insulin imbalance, and other heart and health risks.[3]

In addition to improving their patients’ health, physicians offering a structured weight loss program are better prepared to meet requirements of new pay-for-value reimbursement and for population health management.

Follow the Doctors Fighting Obesity campaign on Twitter to learn more about how physicians are fighting the obesity epidemic: @DrsFightObesity.

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Resources:

[1] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Overweight and Obesity. Health, United States, 2015, table 53 [PDF – 9.8 MB]. Accessed from https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus15.pdf#053

[2] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The health risks of overweight and obesity. Accessed from https://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/effects/index.html

[3] Logemann et al. The effect of Ideal Protein on weight loss and metabolic parameters. https://biointelligentwellness.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Aspirus-metabolic-parameters_2014-12.pdf