Clinical practice guidelines are used in health care as an educational tool to improve patient care as a potential solution to reduce inappropriate variations in care. Opioid prescribing guidelines provide clear and comprehensive, evidence-based recommendations incorporating current information and practices for practitioners. This activity will examine the scope, impact, key statistics and factors contributing to the opioid crisis and highlight the current recommended opioid prescribing guidelines, their challenges and the role of state prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMP). Strategies to aid in implementing the opioid prescribing guidelines and to mitigate the opioid crisis will also be discussed.

This activity will review the rationale, mechanisms of action, and indications for current FDA-approved anti-obesity pharmacotherapies, as well as explore medications that have weight-loss-promoting potential.

This activity will highlight new updates in our understanding of how diabesity develops and describe the negative physiologic effects of this disease on multiple body systems, notably the cardiovascular and renal systems. Optimal treatments for diabesity will be identified, along with an overview of the health burden of diabesity related to long-term complications and reduced function, quality of life and life expectancy. 

Obesity, a major health concern that now affects over 40 percent of the U.S. population, is highly influenced by multiple factors and social determinants of health (SDOH), including disparities in health care access, morbidity and mortality rates, health behavior, and multiple risk factors. Diagnostic disparities may also exist: data on body mass index (BMI) thresholds — used in diagnosis and metabolic and cardiovascular evaluation — indicate variations in specific race/ethnicity and gender subgroups that may not be incorporated in current practice. These disparities and how they are currently being addressed are discussed during this session, as well as the prevalence of obesity and concomitant conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer among populations of varying age, sex, race/ethnicity, and SDOH.