- Center on Health Equity & Access
- Clinical
- Health Care Cost
- Health Care Delivery
- Insurance
- Policy
- Technology
- Value-Based Care
Additional Clinical Considerations for the Management of Obesity
Panelists discuss how reaching underserved populations requires proactive outreach, digital health tools with appropriate training, addressing health literacy barriers, and ensuring equitable access to diabetes technologies and treatments rather than waiting for patients to seek care.
EP: 1.Hormonal Adaptations in Type 2 Diabetes and Obesity
EP: 2.Importance of Clinical Trials and Guideline Recommendations
EP: 3.Barriers Associated with Guideline-Directed Care
EP: 4.The Role of Weight Management and Glycemic Control in the Management of Type 2 Diabetes
EP: 5.Improving Patient Outcomes Beyond Glycemic Control
EP: 6.Taking a Cardiometabolic Health Approach in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes
EP: 7.Seamless Management Between Primary Care Providers and Specialists
EP: 8.Supporting Patients and Primary Care Providers
EP: 9.Optimizing the Clinician-Patient Relationship
EP: 10.Overcoming Weight Bias in Clinical Practice
EP: 11.Creating a Positive Culture Around Weight Discussions
EP: 12.Leveraging Registries and Data Analytics
EP: 13.Structured Care Pathways and Predictive Modeling
EP: 14.Additional Clinical Considerations for the Management of Obesity
Addressing Health Disparities
Underserved populations require proactive outreach rather than waiting for patients to seek care, as they often lack adequate healthcare access. Health economics evidence increasingly supports reaching out to these patients preventively to avoid unplanned healthcare utilization and hospitalizations, which proves more cost-effective than reactive care models. Digital health tools offer opportunities to reach patients who cannot easily travel to appointments due to work or transportation barriers.
However, underserved populations often need training to effectively use digital health technologies due to limited digital literacy. Healthcare providers must avoid assumptions about barriers to care and instead directly inquire about specific obstacles patients face. Common barriers include poor health literacy, lack of digital skills, transportation issues, and food insecurity, but individual patients may face unique challenges requiring personalized solutions.
Ensuring equitable access to diabetes technology like continuous glucose monitors and insulin pumps requires systematic attention to disparities in care delivery. Clinical care pathways must include awareness-building and support systems to help underserved patients access available technologies and treatments. The goal is reaching the broadest possible population with effective diabetes and obesity treatments while addressing the specific needs and barriers faced by underserved communities.
Managed Care Reflections: A Q&A With A. Mark Fendrick, MD, and Michael E. Chernew, PhD
December 2nd 2025To mark the 30th anniversary of The American Journal of Managed Care (AJMC), each issue in 2025 includes a special feature: reflections from a thought leader on what has changed—and what has not—over the past 3 decades and what’s next for managed care. The December issue features a conversation with AJMC Co–Editors in Chief A. Mark Fendrick, MD, director of the Center for Value-Based Insurance Design and a professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; and Michael E. Chernew, PhD, the Leonard D. Schaeffer Professor of Health Care Policy and the director of the Healthcare Markets and Regulation Lab at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.
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