Interactions with health-care professionals are important opportunities to deliver powerful prevention messages. Although by no means universally effective, physicians' or other health professionals' prescriptions and recurring advice to prevent weight gain in order to prevent disease or reduce symptoms of existing disease are often powerful inducements for behavioral change. The majority of Americans have at least annual contact with a health-care professional, and if this contact includes information about the importance of weight management, then it may reinforce prevention messages received in other settings such as schools and work sites. Further, health-care professionals are instrumental in shaping public policy and can leverage their expertise and credibility to present accurate messages in the media and catalyze sweeping changes in the community at large.
Examples of strategies to expand on prevention efforts in the health-care delivery system include:
- Training health-care providers and health profession students to use effective techniques to prevent and treat overweight and obesity.
- Cultivating partnerships between health-care providers, schools, faith-based groups, and other community organizations to target social and environmental causes of overweight and obesity.
FIGURE 10.6
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- Classifying obesity as a disease to enable reimbursement for prevention efforts.
- Partially or fully covering weight-management services including nutrition education and physical activity programs as health plan benefits.
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