Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Ozempic Set To Change This Year's Thanksgiving Food-Fest
Bloomberg: Ozempic, Weight-Loss Drugs Make Thanksgiving Less About The Food
Thanksgiving this year will look very different for Julissa Alcantar-Martinez and her family. The Houston-area realtor has been taking the appetite suppressing medication Mounjaro for one-and-a-half years following fifteen months on Ozempic. She has lost 115 pounds after years of struggles with dieting and diet-related disease. Her son, 17, has lost 65 pounds on Ozempic, and her 21-year-old daughter has lost 50 on it. (Shanker, 11/19)
AP: No More Thanksgiving 'Food Orgy'? New Obesity Medications Change How Users Think Of Holiday Meals
For most of her life, Claudia Stearns dreaded Thanksgiving. As a person who struggled with obesity since childhood, Stearns hated the annual turmoil of obsessing about what she ate — and the guilt of overindulging on a holiday built around food. Now, after losing nearly 100 pounds using medications including Wegovy, a powerful new anti-obesity drug, Stearns says the “food noise” in her head has gone very, very quiet. (Aleccia, 11/20)
More on weight loss drugs —
Stat: Mounjaro, Zepbound: Why Two Names For The Same Drug?
Whether you’re a fan of the drug name Zepbound or, like one X user, think it sounds like “an off brand bus line,” you’re likely to have some opinion about the new moniker for Eli Lilly’s blockbuster diabetes drug Mounjaro. The company announced the new name on Nov. 8 following the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug for weight loss as well. (Merelli, 11/20)
Reuters: Boom In Weight-Loss Drugs To Drive Up US Employers' Medical Costs In 2024 - Mercer
Booming demand for newer weight-loss and diabetes drugs is expected to accelerate the rise in medical expenses for employers in the United States next year, staff health benefits consultant Mercer said on Friday. GLP-1 medications approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration could contribute between 50 and 100 basis points to the trend, Mercer's Chief Health Actuary, Sunit Patel, told Reuters in an interview. (Leo and Mandowara, 11/17)
On diet culture and mental health —
CNN: How To Help Teens Can Avoid Diet Culture This Holiday Season
The fact that diet culture all over social media targets grown women is bad enough, but such messaging also trickles down to tweens and teens. (And let’s be honest, a lot is aimed directly at young people too.) It couldn’t happen at a worse time: There’s been a noticeable spike in eating disorders, particularly among adolescent girls, since the beginning of the pandemic. (Hurley, 11/18)
