Personalized Health Planning--Shared Medical Appointments for Obesity

Obesity affects a large portion of our population and accounts for a significant individual health burden for both individual patients and society. Though as little as 3 to 5% weight loss is associated with significant clinical benefits,1,2 current approaches to treat patients with obesity are not providing patients with the interventions needed to routinely see this change. One potential solution to this problem is utilizing personalized health planning (PHP) shared medical appointments (SMAs) to address the treatment of obesity. As PHP SMA has shown to improve clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction when compared to traditional care in other chronic illnesses,3,4 it could also be useful as a strategy to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of treating patients with obesity.