Dear Colleagues and Members:

According to many, the 2006 annual meeting of The Obesity Society held last month in Boston was a real success from both a social and, especially, a scientific point of view.It was a record-breaking meeting with 2,244 delegates inattendance, despite the competition of the International Congress of Obesity held a month earlier in Sydney. We owe this success to the outstanding work of our Program Committee under the leadership of Donna Ryan and Andy Greenberg. I found the scientific program exciting, and was inspired by the excellent crop of junior investigators rising to prominence.

In my first note to you as president, I extend thanks to our past president, Dr. Tom Wadden, the interim Executive Director, Ann Kenworthy, the Executive Committee, the Council and all our committees for their relentless work overthe past year. Under Dr. Wadden's leadership during this transition period, our society has achieved major milestones. The Obesity Society is emerging from being a youthful academic society focused primarily on basic and clinical research into a mature organization with tripartite functions in research,education and advocacy.

I am delighted to assume the presidency for thecoming year, and will strive to continue bringing our society to the forefront of the obesity cause. Our vision, according to the society's strategic plan, is to "be the leader in understanding, preventing and improving the lives ofthose affected." To do that, our mission includesresearch, education and advocacy. I can already foresee that over this coming year, our members will appreciate more visible efforts in advocacy. During my time as your president - and with your help - I want to achieve the following goals:

If you attended the 2006 Annual Scientific Meeting in Boston, you'll soon have free access to education sessions recorded live and available via online streaming audio/slide presentations. This great value- added benefit for meeting participants allows you to view content from sessions you didn't attend, track the continuing education credits you earned, and earn additional credits.

Watch for announcement of these updates to The Learning Center. They'll be available starting in mid-December.

At the annual scientific meeting in Boston, the Council approved a white paper on third-party reimbursement. The white paper outlines the following principles for advocacy of coverage of obesity therapies with employers,providers, patients and policy-makers:

A. The raison d'etre of The Obesity Society's involvement is to expand patient access to accepted interventions for weight management. Recognizing the importance of giving providers adequate financial incentive to treat obesity, nevertheless, The Obesity Society's principle has been and will continue to be improvement in patientcare.

B. Persons who are overweight or obese should not be excluded, on the basis of weight, from joining in or participating in health insurance reimbursement programs. Nor should there be imposed on such individuals additional copayments or other obstacles not generally required of patients with other similar conditions, such as hypertension, high cholesterol or type 2 diabetes.

C. The Obesity Society should act vigorously to encourage health care plans and employers to include obesity treatments as a covered service on the same basis as they cover other long-term, chronic diseases.

D. The Obesity Society will seek to encourage inclusion of obesity treatment in health plans through participation in organizations or coalitions if available and through our own efforts if necessary.

E. The Obesity Society will support the role of evidence-based medicine which stresses the value of scientific studies in the design of protocols and interventions.

F. The Obesity Society will encourage the development of, and dissemination of, relevant studies and analyses relating to third party reimbursement of obesity treatment.

G. The Obesity Society will seek to participate in the development of protocols for the treatment of overweight and obesity and conditions closely related to overweight and obesity, by qualified organizations, including but not limited to, the National Commission for Quality Assurance, the Advisory Group, the National Institutes of Health, and, the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality.

H. The Obesity Society will seek to expand Medicare's coverage of physician, dietician and psychologist counseling for weight loss and elimination of the exclusion of pharmaceuticals for the treatment of overweight and obesity.

The Task Force is chaired by Lou Aronne and includes Richard L. Atkinson, George Blackburn,Eric Finkelstein, Walter Poires, Nicholas Pronk, Marlene Schwartz, Adam Tsai, Anne Wolf, and Eric Ravussin.

On behalf of The Obesity Society, Morgan Downey, executive vice president, is serving on two advisory bodies. The first is the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) Adult Obesity Measurement Advisory panel. NCQA's HEDIS system is a major quality component of the managed care industry. The second is an advisory panel on bariatric surgery convened by the Center for Medical Technology Policy, a private non-profit organization which assesses medical technology.

A December consensus conference, led by former NAASO president Samuel Klein, is one of the first outcomes of The Obesity Society's collaboration with Shaping America's Health - the Association for Weight Management and Obesity Prevention. The panel will assess waist circumference management of patients by health professionals.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has held that the Americans with Disabilities Act(ADA) does not cover individuals with morbid obesity not related to a physiological cause. The case involved a driver/dockworker whose weight has ranged from 340 to 450 pounds. The court reasoned that the ADA prohibits employers from discriminating against an individual with a disability, but the disability must be a "physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities of the individual."

The Equal Employment Opportunities Commission(EEOC) had argued in this case that the employee had an actual impairment that was regarded erroneously by his employer as affecting his ability to do his job. The court held that physiologically caused morbid obesity may be an impairment, however "non-physiological" morbid obesity would not. A concurring opinion noted, "It is possible that morbid obesity is a disorder that by its very nature has a physiological cause. This would preclude the need for a plaintiff to put forth evidence that his individual case was caused physiologically. No court or agency has ever adopted this position,however, and the EEOC has put forth no evidence, medical or otherwise, to support such a sweeping conclusion."

Sedentary lifestyles may be affecting more than body weight. According to a study in the Journal of Environmental Management, park visits by Americans grew steadily from the 1930s to 1987 when they peaked at an average 1.2 visits per person per year. Over the next 16 years, visits dropped by 16%. Two researchers, Oliver R.W Pergams and Patricia A. Zardiac, determined that 97.5% of the drop could be attributed to increased time Americans spend watching movies, surfing the Internet and playing videogames. In 2003, Americans devoted 327 more hours than in 1987 to such activities. The researchers called this "videophilia," which they describe as "the new human tendency to focus on sedentary activities involving electronic media."

Workers with above-normal body weight have increased risk of short-term disability, according to a new study in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Researchers, led by Vincent C. Arena, analyzed data from 19,000 employees of a large financial service institution and found that short-term disability rates rose from 7.3% for normal weight workers to 8.8% for overweight workers to 14.9% for obese workers. Women had a higher rate of short-term disability than men.

News from the East
By Kathleen Keller

Fed UP! Winning the War Against Childhood Obesity, by Susan Okie, MD, has just come out in paperback. The text was originally published in 2005 by Joseph Henry Press of the NationalAcademies.

Kathleen L. Keller, PhD, a Research Associate at the New York Obesity Research Center, will be the general editor for a new Sage Reference Publication entitled Encyclopedia of Obesity. This comprehensive project is a two-volume encyclopedia reference intended for use by colleges, public and health libraries. It will contain a variety of information about obesity, its causes, definitions, and related health-comorbidities. Additionally, many institutions that study obesity, including The Obesity Society, will be reviewed in this book. Authors are currently being recruited to make contributions. If you are interested in writing for this project, please contact SusanMoskowitz.

News from the Midwest
By Melissa Nelson

Dr. Margot Cleary (Hormel Institute, University of Minnesota) recently attended the Breast Cancer Research Foundation Awards Luncheon in New York City. This is the fourth year that she has received this award. The title of her grant is "Body Weight Change, Leptin/Adiponectin Ratio and Breast Cancer." She will also receive funding from AICR to determine effect of obesity on prostate cancer in TRAMP mice (a prostate cancer model).

News from the West
By Judith Stern

California
Dr. J Esteban Verela completed a fellowship at University of California, Irvine. He is now at the Dallas VA Medical Center where he is guiding both the clinical and research efforts in bariatric laparoscopic surgery.

Dr. Judith S.Stern and Dr. Richard L. Atkinson received the Richard Atkinson and Judith S. Stern Award for Distinguished Public Service at The Obesity Society's annual meeting in Boston. Both of them want to thank The Obesity Society for recognizing their accomplishments in advocacy with the American Obesity Association. AOA is now a part of The Obesity Society.

A paper written by Dr. Richard N. Bergman and colleagues was winner of the 2006 Stefan Schuy Research Award of the Austrian Society for Biomedical Engineering. The paper was entitled Reduced access to insulin-sensitive tissues in dogs with obesity secondary to increased fat intake (Diabetes 2006,55:1769-7589). Dr. Bergman, as president of the Association of Chairs of Departments of Physiology, is hosting its Fall Retreat November 30-December 3 at The Occidental Grand Papagayo Hotel in Guanacaste Province, Liberia, Costa Rica.

Idaho
Dr. Cher-Jacobsenis the medical director of a relatively new comprehensive OPTIFAST program in Post Falls,Idaho.

Oregon
The Oregon Health Sciences Center for the Study of Weight Regulation and Associated Disorders sponsored a colloquium entitled The Science of Physical Activity and Health Outcomes on November 10. The genesis of this conference came from a new R01 collaboration between OHSU (Dr.Bruce Wolfe) and Mayo (Dr. James Levine). The collaboration involves measuring resting and 24- hour energy expenditure before and after bariatric surgery. Dr. Roger Cone (Director of the OHSU Center for the Study of Weight Regulation and Associated Disorders) is this year's recipient of the prestigious Endocrine Regulation Prize by the Foundation IPSEN. The award was for Cone's research achievements in explaining the brain's role in regulating body weight, and was presented during the European Neuro-Endocrine Association meeting in Athens, Greece. Congratulations!

Nevada
Dr. Bill Evans (Children's Heart Center) gave a talk and presented a poster at the 10th International Congress on Obesity in Sydney, Australia. Dr. Gary Mayman and Dr. Evans gave talks at the American Academy of Pediatrics 2006 National Conference & Exhibition in Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. Katrinka Kip presented two posters at The Obesity Society's annual meeting in Boston.

Washington
Dr. Adam Drewnowski (Director of Center for Public Health Nutrition and Professor of Epidemiology and Medicine, University of Washington) was an invited speaker at the International Congress on Obesity in Sydney and at the 1st World Congress of Public Health Nutrition in Barcelona. His presentations dealt with poverty, obesity, and access to healthy foods.