PHYSICIANS: Do Your Patients Need Help?

As a society, obesity is a major public health concern. We often hear about the "battle of the bulge" and day-to-day struggles with weight.

These struggles can be particularly difficult for teenagers. With social pressures and body changes, it becomes necessary to focus on behavior changes of this specific patient population.

You now have a local resource available.

Community Care Physicians has developed an adolescent obesity program to help drive behavior change among 11-18 years olds who are overweight/obese. Using a health coach, a personal trainer, and sports nutritionist, this program focuses on developing goals and action plans, and measurements of success to improve the health of each member of the program.

The NICE Weight Transitions Program will create communication pathways between each team member, the participant as well as the participants primary care provider. As the teenagers primary care physician, you will be an integral part of the team.

As a physician, you are on the "front line" when it comes to health. You intimately know your patients, their health and their families. You have the opportunity to identify those teenagers with risk factors and refer them to the NICE Weight Transitions Program.

If you have a patient that could benefit from a weight loss program, please:

1. Provide the patient and/or guardian with the information on the NICE Weight Transitions Program
2. Medically clear all patients prior to starting a weight loss program
3. Provide a referral. We highly recommend documentation that you, the physician, would like the adolescent enrolled in the program.
4. Provide the patient or the health coach for the program with any relevant health information that you would like them to have for reference.

The referral will be kept on file in the patient's chart that is kept by the health coach. As the primary care physician, the health coach, trainer, psychologist and nutritionist will share any program plans and notes with you, so you are kept in the loop with your patient's progress.

To mark progress, we will use clinical measurements, including:

• Reduction of BMI
• Reduction of Diabetes measurements (glucose, HgA1c)
• Reduction of blood pressure
• Other health measurements established by the team, including body fat analysis and fitness assessment

Many of these measurements require the involvement of the participant's primary care physician. So, it's important to keep lines of communication open among all team members.

At this time, the program is not covered by insurance.

For more information about the program, for information to distribute in your practice, or to set up a face-to-face meeting to review the details of the program, please contact the NICE Weight Transitions Health Coach at 518-213-0220 or by email at NICE@communitycare.com.

We look forward to partnering with you to improve the health of your patients.

Learn More about the NICE Adolescent Obesity Program >