Penn study suggests weight-loss program in primary care

By relying heavily on lower-paid medical assistants who already worked in the offices and underwent six to eight hours of training to be coaches, it also cost less than a doctor's time would. A big unanswered question, however, is whether insurance companies would pay for any of it.

Although there are plenty of commercial weight-loss programs on the market, many don't work and most have no connection with a family's physician. Only the most highly motivated people sign up on their own.

"When patients are told by their doctor that they need to lose weight it is a much more important source of authority," said Morgan Downey, a longtime healthcare advocate and publisher of downeyobesityreport.com. Plus, he said, the doctor may also be treating various conditions that are exacerbated by obesity, from asthma to lower back pain. "So the message there is that losing weight is not just a good virtue in itself but is related to making better the condition that we are treating today," he said.

The program studied by Penn also has the advantage of being located in the primary care provider's office.

The doctor can say, "I want you to walk down the hall and see our medical assistant," said lead author Thomas Wadden, "and I might capture you and get you started right then and there."

Wadden, director of the Center for Weight and Eating Disorders at Penn's Perelman School of Medicine, presented the findings at an American Heart Association conference in Orlando, Fla., on Monday afternoon. They were simultaneously published online in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Contact staff writer Don Sapatkin at 215-854-2617 or dsapatkin@phillynews.com.