Clinical Guidance

Obesity and Healthy Lifestyle: Clinical Guidance and Practice Resources

Obesity is a major risk factor for many prevalent and dangerous health issues, including heart disease, hypertension, stroke, cancer, and diabetes. Patients may struggle with overeating for multiple reasons, and require a customized, sensitive approach.

One-third of adults and 17% of youth in the United States are considered obese. You play a critical role in counseling patients about healthy interventions to promote weight loss or prevent the onset of obesity. The AAFP offers you evidence-based, and practical obesity and fitness resources to support your patients’ weight management needs. These can help you:

Identify obstacles to nutritional eating habits and suggest alternative food choices.
Recommend positive behavioral strategies, such as ways to cope with stress, cognitive behavior therapy options, food journaling, and how to establish a social support network.
Set realistic physical activity goals.

The AAFP in conjunction with the Core Quality Measure Collaborative promotes measure harmonization across programs and payers. Listed here are the measures currently selected to evaluate obesity.

Obesity Quality Measures

0421/ 0421e

Preventive Care and Screening: Body Mass Index (BMI) Screening and Follow-Up

National Committee for Quality Assurance

No longer NQF endorsed. Developer plans to maintain measure independently.

eCQM available

0024

0024 Weight Assessment and Counseling for Nutrition and Physical Activity for Children/Adolescents (WCC)

National Committee for Quality Assurance

Telehealth eligible

Implementation Tools and Considerations

Incorporating Lifestyle Medicine into Family Practice
Lifestyle medicine focuses on five main domains: connectedness, movement, nutrition, recovery, and substance use. When addressing all domains together, lifestyle medicine can address multiple chronic diseases simultaneously.

Helping Patients Set Fitness Goals
Encouraging your patients to adopt and maintain a healthy lifestyle for weight management is a crucial wellness strategy, but these conversations can be challenging.

Incorporating Lifestyle Medicine into Family Practice

Family physicians are positioned to champion and prescribe lifestyle medicine in the clinic. This can address multiple chronic diseases simultaneously.

TOOLS YOU CAN USE