An Integrated View of Treatment Options Available for Obesity

Abstract

Controversy surrounded the decision to recognize obesity as a disease, but scientific advances have provided irrefutable logic to this effect. Several professional and scientific organizations now recognize obesity as a disease. The reason for the reluctance was due to our incomplete understanding of physiology and long-held views that obesity should not be medicalized. To do so would detract from the personal responsibility of the population to control their own body weight. Although the latter view is still popular among some in the medical community and lay public, the movement to recognize obesity as a disease has enabled the subsequent step to naturally follow, that is, obesity is a disease that requires treatment. The question then arises: what is the best model of care to treat obesity? Furthermore, what would be the benefit of an integrated obesity care pathway?