Ted Kyle Emphasizes a Greater Need for Obesity Education for Employers

Obesity is more than just a lifestyle disease. Ted Kyle, RPh, MBA, principal at ConscienHealth, explained that understanding its complexities as well as the behavioral and physical care it requires is essential in improving the health and productivity of employees.

Transcript (slightly modified)

What sort of employer education is needed to understand the benefit of covering certain obesity types?

Well there’s extensive data ranging from the behavioral care to prevent the progression of obesity to diabetes that shows that it’s actually cost saving. It also makes for more productive employees and an understanding of the complexity of the disease, that it’s more than just a lifestyle disease is essential.

And then, the treatment starts with behavioral care but goes on to pharmacol-therapy and surgery, which in appropriate patients can make a huge difference in health, quality of life, and ultimately the productivity of an employee and really a deep understanding of that is necessary.