Obesity Project

More than half of Americans are obese or overweight, representing a 30% increase over the last decade.(1) Obesity disproportionately affects minority communities - 37% of non-Hispanic black women and 34% of Mexican-Americans. This disease dramatically impacts the American economy and contributes $68 billion per year in direct medical costs and another $30 billion spent on weight reduction and special foods.

Physicians have failed to adequately address this epidemic. Recent studies have shown that physicians counsel only 29% of overweight patients on weight loss. (2) Physicians also fail to participate in primary prevention of overweight and obesity, counseling on 34% of their patients on the need for exercise. (3)

Poor diet and sedentary lifestyle have been identified as the 2nd leading cause of death, and obesity and overweight has been included as one of the Healthy People 2010 leading health indicators. AMSA's Community and Public Health Action Committee is committed to addressing this growing epidemic by promoting improved medical curricula on obesity and encouraging local AMSA chapters to become involved in obesity/overweight community outreach projects.

Please review the information below to learn more about our project... and please let us know if you are interested in helping.

Obesity Curriculum Project
Obesity and overweight affects 1/3 of all Americans. Yet medical curricula have failed to respond to this epidemic. Physicians fail to address diet and exercise adequately, and obesity is often overlooked as a significant contributor to morbidity and mortality. AMSA's Community and Public Health Action Committee is working to address this deficit by providing curriculum materials that focus on effectively counseling obese patients. We have produced an obesity curriculum module designed to be presented by a student over an hour period. The module consists of a short PowerPoint presentation and a powerful video discussing the clinical aspects of obesity and interacting with and treating the obese patient. Accompanying these materials is a student leader's guide that provides important background notes and takes the presenter slide by slide through the presentation. The module also comes with a short evaluation form that we request to be sent back to us by email as a means of feedback to make this module better in the future.

Community-Based Interventions
Addressing Overweight and Obesity
We are encouraging local AMSA chapters to become involved in local outreach projects addressing overweight and obesity. Several project ideas include:

• Teaching local middle school and high school students about nutrition and heart health
• Offering free nutrition counseling at local health fairs
• Measuring BMIs and waist circumferences at local shopping mall
• Provide clinic patients with guides to health grocery shopping, including leading a heart healthy tour of local grocery stores
• Distributing guides to health fast foods