Primary Care Update: Type 2 Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome and Obesity

The increasing prevalence of obesity and overweight patients has had a profound impact on health care such that the American Medical Association in June, 2013 stated that obesity is a disease. This declaration was hailed by some and denounced by others. Nevertheless, calling obesity a disease is anticipated to further affect clinical decisions, management strategies and health outcomes of all health care clinicians, regardless of their clinical specialty.
Current conservative estimates indicate that over 65% of the adult population is clinically overweight, or obese, and at risk for obesity-related co-morbidities including hypertension and type 2 diabetes. The propensity of interrelated obesity co-morbidities such as insulin resistance, abnormal glucose metabolism, dyslipidemia, and hypertension to cluster among patients was recognized as metabolic syndrome, and further intensifies the complexity of health care for these patients. Metabolic syndrome affects an estimated 75 million Americans, and is most often related to a predominance of upper body or visceral fat accumulation which significantly increases risk for type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and events.
Despite improved clinical awareness, the rates of type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome and obesity continue to increase across the lifespan. As a result, a major national health objective for the year 2020 is to reduce the prevalence of obesity among adults and children to less than 15 percent.
Based on these findings, this conference has been designed with the overall objective of equipping healthcare providers with a current scientific clinical research understanding of obesity and related co-morbidities by examining environmental and genetic causes, the pathophysiology, and treatment strategies which can be translated into the clinical setting.