The current state of pediatric obesity treatment

Excerpt

Obesity is perhaps one of the most troubling and difficult to treat conditions faced by healthcare providers today. Despite the well intentioned efforts of the medical community, we have done little to curtail rates of obesity in either the adult or pediatric population [1]. Obesity is a well established risk factor for a multitude of chronic diseases in adults including type 2 diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular disease. Evidence from the past several decades has now definitively shown that the origins of these diseases begin in childhood and are associated with an obese body habitus. The medical community is now faced with not only a growing population of obese children with signs of what were previously only “adult” diseases (metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, markers of early atherosclerotic disease), but an impending tsunami of clinically evident premature cardiovascular disease in a young adult population that were obese as children. In addition, obesity, in and of itself, has been estimated to be associated with a startling 147 billion dollar price tag in the United States alone [2]. It has therefore become imperative that we devise more effective strategies to both prevent and treat pediatric obesity to reduce future health morbidities and medical costs. …