The Obesity Medicine Association's clinical statement: defining obesity as a chronic disease, diagnosing it beyond BMI, reducing weight bias, and running an obesity-medicine practice.
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OMA Clinical Practice Statement 2022 - Fitch & Bays, Obesity Pillars (PDF)
A practical reference for clinicians building or running an obesity-medicine practice - covering how the OMA defines and diagnoses obesity, how to avoid weight bias, and how to structure care and telehealth.
Dr. Hammer's 5 Second Takeaways
Obesity is defined as a chronic, treatable disease
The OMA defines it as "a chronic, progressive, relapsing, and treatable multi-factorial, neurobehavioral disease," in which excess body fat drives adipose dysfunction and abnormal fat-mass forces, causing metabolic, biomechanical, and psychosocial harm.
Diagnose adiposity, not just BMI
BMI may suffice at the population level, but accurate individual diagnosis often needs measures beyond body weight - waist circumference, percent body fat, and android/visceral fat.
Two complication categories: "sick fat" and "fat mass"
Adiposopathy ("sick fat disease") drives cardiovascular disease, cancer, high glucose, high blood pressure, dyslipidemia, fatty liver, and sex-hormone changes (hypogonadism, PCOS). Fat-mass disease drives sleep apnea and orthopedic conditions.
Reducing weight bias is part of care
Treatment begins with proactive steps to avoid weight bias - patient-appropriate language, office equipment, and supplies.
A practical practice template (ADAPT)
The statement provides standard operating procedures and the OMA "ADAPT" method for telehealth: Assessment, Diagnosis, Advice, Prognosis, and Treatment.
Nerd-Out
This OMA Clinical Practice Statement (Fitch & Bays, Obesity Pillars 2022) is a practice-building reference: it operationalizes the adiposopathy vs. fat-mass-disease framework, details anthropometric diagnosis (waist circumference, percent body fat, android/visceral fat) where BMI is insufficient, and supplies standard operating procedures, bias-reduction measures, and the ADAPT telehealth workflow for establishing and managing an obesity-medicine practice.
Go to the Source:
This summary is drawn from "Obesity definition, diagnosis, bias, standard operating procedures (SOPs), and telehealth: An Obesity Medicine Association (OMA) Clinical Practice Statement (CPS) 2022" by Fitch and Bays (Obesity Pillars, 2022). The full statement is in the linked PDF above.