Are Health Care Professionals Advising Obese Patients to Lose Weight?

Abstract

Nearly one fourth of US adults are obese, which is defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of 30 kg/m² or more¹ and thus are at risk for numerous chronic health conditions.² Clinicians treating obese patients have an opportunity not only to improve the health of these individuals but also to affect positively the nation's public health by implementing the Clinical Guidelines on the Identification, Evaluation, and Treatment of Overweight and Obesity in Adults.³ In these 1998 guidelines, an expert panel convened by the National Institutes of Health, recommended that all obese persons should try to lose weight and that health care professionals should discuss weight control with their obese patients. This study, using data from 1996 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), describes the proportion and characteristics of obese persons who received advice about weight loss from their health care professional and determines whether this advice was associated with attempts to lose weight.