EDOR's Professor Jim Mann and Dr Cherie Stayner have co-authored a Newsroom article highlighting the overlooked consequences of a recent international report on obesity.
The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology Commission report summarised the current research evidence on obesity, which was considered by 58 international experts including those with lived experience of obesity.
The report contained a discussion on the role of Body Mass Index, or BMI, as a measure of obesity. New Zealand media articles primarily focused on this aspect of the report but gave little attention to the report's proposal to consider obesity as either pre-clinical or clinical obesity, and the consequences of that for allocation of healthcare resources.
According to The Lancet report, clinical obesity should be diagnosed when there is evidence that excess weight has adversely affected organs, tissues or body systems, or limited day-to-day activities, and then actively treated.
Dr Cherie Stayner
However, the report's assumption that preclinical obesity would not require intensive medical management could have important implications for the New Zealand healthcare system.
The Newsroom article argues that the risks associated with increasing levels of body fat and its consequences represent a continuum rather than a binary measure. Many people with preclinical obesity have multiple disease risk factors, and there will be a significant number of people at high risk of an adverse outcome.
In addition, given that treatments for obesity are expensive and not readily available in Aotearoa New Zealand, measures to prevent obesity and its consequences, such as type 2 diabetes, are crucial to reducing both healthcare costs and pressure on the health system.
