Medications and Obesity: Exploring the Landscape and Advancing Comprehensive Care: Proceedings of a Workshop (2024)
Chapter: 1 Introduction
1
Introduction
On March 19–20, 2024, the Roundtable on Obesity Solutions of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies) held a workshop titled Medications and Obesity: Exploring the Landscape and Advancing Comprehensive Care.1 In his opening remarks, Nicolaas (Nico) P. Pronk, HealthPartners Institute, described how the roundtable fosters an ongoing dialogue on critical and emerging obesity-related issues—using a policy, systems, and environmental change lens—with a focus on effective equity strategies to address obesity-related disparities. In striving to explore and advance effective solutions, the roundtable engages leaders from diverse sectors and voices needed to prevent, treat, and manage obesity, including the health care sector, industry, government, philanthropy, nonprofits, the financial sector, and academia.
During the first day of the workshop, the first session explored medications that can affect weight status, the altered pharmacokinetics and clinical effects of drugs in patients with obesity, the inclusion of individuals with obesity in drug development, and current and future anti-obesity medications (AOMs) (Chapter 2). The second session spotlighted lived experiences in receiving and providing obesity care (Chapter 3), examined mental and
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1 The planning committee’s role was limited to planning the workshop, and the Proceedings of a Workshop has been prepared by the workshop rapporteur as a factual summary of what occurred at the workshop. Statements, recommendations, and opinions expressed are those of individual presenters and participants and are not necessarily endorsed or verified by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and they should not be construed as reflecting any group consensus.
behavioral health concerns related to the use of AOMs (Chapter 4), and discussed strategies to integrate nutrition, physical activity, and medications into obesity treatment (Chapter 5). On the second day, the third session focused on clinical practice guidelines for treating obesity in adult and pediatric populations (Chapter 6), followed by discussions on the impact of expanding public and private insurance coverage for AOMs from economic, federal, and employer perspectives (Chapter 7). The statement of task for the workshop is presented in Box 1-1. The workshop agenda and biographical sketches of the workshop speakers and planning committee members can be found in Appendixes A and B, respectively.
BOX 1–1
Workshop Statement of Task
A planning committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will organize a public workshop featuring invited presentations and discussions to explore the relationship between medications and obesity, including medications that are used to treat obesity. The workshop will include presentations and discussions on the state of the science around the safety and efficacy of medications in people with overweight or obesity; medications that may cause changes in body composition and weight status; and medications used to treat obesity and obesity-related comorbidities. With a lens on diverse lived experiences and attention to weight bias and stigma, the workshop will also address the implications of pharmacotherapy for obesity on policy and legislation, economics, access, public perception and discourse, and population health.
