Charles Vega, MD: The Primary Care Role in Obesity

Managing weight is challenging for a lot of people and can lead to obesity.

And it can be confusing and misunderstood what the role of a primary care profession in treating obesity.

In an interview with HCPLive®, Charles P. Vega, MD, Clinical Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at UC Irvine, explained what he believes the role of the primary care physician is in treating patients with obesity.

One of the important factors for Vega is to remove the biases that come with treating obesity.

“I think we always have to be mindful of our own biases whenever we are seeing any type of patients,” he said. “But we know from research that bias is pretty strong in society.”

Vega also spoke about what treatments like semaglutide and other pharmacotherapies can provide for patients with obesity and diabetes.

“They are really strong game-changers in that you can treat the 2 diseases at once and not just focus on the diabetes and focus on the obesity,” Vega said.

Vega said drugs like GLP-1 agonists can help manage the weight and even motivate patients to continue lifestyle interventions.

Vega presented during Pri-Med West 2022 in Anaheim a session called
Weight Matters: Refocusing Diabetes Care in People with Obesity with Jennifer Green, MD, of Duke University.