Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Using BMI Is Pervasive in Health Care. Moving Away Will Take Time, Experts Warn.
Stat: Why It Won’t Be So Easy For Medicine To Displace BMI
The policy that the American Medical Association adopted this week to de-emphasize the use of BMI is part of a growing movement away from the single, weight-based metric and toward a broader way of assessing health risk through multiple factors. Yet it will take more than the giant physician group to displace the use of the body mass index throughout medicine. Reliance on the metric is ubiquitous in the ways health care is delivered and paid for — from surgeries to fertility treatment, from drug approvals to insurance reimbursement. (Chen, 6/16)
AP: Teens With Severe Obesity Are Turning To Surgery And New Weight Loss Drugs, Despite Controversy
John Simon III was a hungry baby, a “chunky” toddler and a chubby little boy, his mother said. But by age 14, his weight had soared to 430 pounds and was a life-threatening medical condition. Nine months after weight-loss surgery that removed a portion of his stomach, John has lost about 150 pounds, boosting his health — and his hopes for the future. “It was like a whole new start,” said John, who will start high school in California this fall. (Aleccia, 6/16)
Modern Healthcare: Wegovy, Ozempic Demand Leaves Calibrate, Ro, Noom Scrambling
Telehealth companies, health insurers and pharmaceutical manufacturers are playing the blame game amid a shortage of popular weight loss drugs. Wegovy manufacturer Novo Nordisk said in May shortages of certain doses of the weight loss drug are expected to persist through September. The shortage of such medications known as glucagon-like peptide agnostics, or GLP-1s, also includes Novo Nordisk’s diabetes drug Ozempic and Eli Lilly's Trulicity, according to a Food and Drug Administration database. (Turner, 6/15)
CNN: Food Addiction: What It Is And How To Overcome It
About 1 in 8 Americans over 50 struggle with an unhealthy relationship with highly processed food that goes well beyond the occasional binge or midnight snack, according to a recent poll. Known as food addiction, the condition isn’t limited to older adults — previous food addiction data had primarily centered around young- to middle-age adults up to around 50, said Ashley Gearhardt, lead author of the latest research by Michigan Medicine and a pioneer in the field of food addiction studies. (Rogers, 6/15)
