Blandine Lacroix talks with Diabetes in Control Publisher Steve Freed at the 2016 AACE Meeting.
In part 2 of this Exclusive Interview, Blandine Lacroix shares the weight loss tools that Novo Nordisk provides to help practitioners as well as patients with the disease of obesity, including websites that share the science of obesity and weight loss.
Blandine Lacroix is the Vice President of Obesity Marketing at Novo Nordisk.
Transcript of this video segment:
Steve: Thats great. I find it interesting that Novo Nordisk has always been involved with the patient aspect of diabetes. And now were talking about obesity. One of the things, first of all, most of the, if not all of the people here are attending are endocrinologists. But 90% of the people dont go to endocrinologists if they have diabetes and certainly for obesity Im sure its the same number, they go to family practitioners. Those are the people that have to deal with it. And they usually only have 5-10 minutes to deal with obesity which is certainly not enough time to get a person to change their lifestyle. And I know that Novo is always participated by providing tools, not just for the physician but for the patients. I assume youre here and you have some tools and probably new tools because obesity, and you have a new drug for that, and basically you want to help that physician and make it easier for them, and thats great. So, if youre talking to physicians and educators, pharmacists, dietitians, what kind of tools can Novo provide to help them in their practice and help them with their patients?
Lacroix: So youre right Steve, a lot of our efforts is around how do we support the team that support the person with obesity and that team is a medical team. We do have, over the last 3 years, been engaging a lot of people to understand their needs. And weve been able to develop tools to help them engage in their dialogues with each other. So we do have a platform, called Rethink Obesity with a website called rethinkobesity.com that is open to the medical community to understand how to engage the person with obesity successfully and set some achievable goals together and to engage in that critical weight management journey. So thats the element of information and tools that we have at the disposal of the person in the medical community. We also have on the other side, the platform called truthaboutweight.com which is focusing on the person with obesity and of society for them to understand what are we talking about. So many of those people have engaged in trying to lose weight for many, many years, and what theyve experienced is Im sometimes very successful in losing my weight but my weight comes back, and it comes back sometimes more than I used to have it before I tried to lose weight. And with the progress in the science of obesity that are very recent. People are now able to understand now that obesity is a disease, and every time you lose weight, your body is going to try to work against you to bring that weight back on, and theres a number of mechanisms in your body that drive that phenomenon. And with the science of obesity and the medical understanding of it, were are now able to have the person understand that there is help at hand in the medical community around the journey of losing weight. So the truthaboutweight.com platform allows the person to understand more about obesity and their journey around weight but also understand how they can engage their practitioner, their nurse, their pharmacist in a different dialogue around that weight journey.
Steve: So maybe we can repeat those two websites.
Lacroix: Yes, so Im going to be advertorial and Im going to talk about rethinkobesity.com, so its rethinkobesity.com for the healthcare professional, and truthaboutweight.com which is about obesity in the weight journey for the person with obesity in the society.
Steve: What kind of tools do you use on the website for well its actually for the patients its for the physician to send the patients there. Otherwise they would have no way of knowing where that website is.
Lacroix: Yeah, so Truth about Weight is something that you can, when you google anything around weight you should be able to land on that website. Its something that from the traffic that we have to date, we see that people find this information on their own, what weve learned over the last 3 years engaging with the person with obesity, they dont necessarily rely or think that the practice or the physician or the pharmacist is the person that can help them. So they dont actually ask for information. So they usually use the internet and their friends and family to find information. So weve found ways to reach them through a number of avenues online so that they can find the truth about weight. On that website they have the opportunity to document the journey theyve engaged into for weight. As an outcome they can print out, kind of a journal that they can bring to the practice or to the physician or to the pharmacist for them to start showing them the journey theyve gone through. So thats the patient coming to the doctor saying look this is my journey, I need your help. Another thing weve learned over the last 3 years is, as I said, that the person with obesity doesnt always think about the practitioner, the pharmacist or the nurse as someone who can help. So on the other hand what we are trying to do through the rethinkobesity.com website and the tools is were providing some training opportunities and education for the medical community to understand what are the questions you can ask to uncover this whole journey the person has gone through around their weight? You may have the health record that shows the weight progression, the losses and the regains, throughout time, but have you ever spent the time, sat down and said so let us understand whats going on here? So theres an important tool which is what we call motivational interviewing, so the person knows how to engage positively in that dialogue with the person with obesity, which allows the two people to connect and to start the engagement, so thats one set of tools. The other tool is around tool that they can share with their patients so they understand the science of obesity, so they understand whats going on in their body and that is fighting against your will, as you wish, and start looking at options. Theres a lot of work in that Rethink Obesity platform around how do we engage in changing the way we eat, the way we work around food, so healthy eating. Theres information around how do we engage in the right program for physical activity. Theres a lot of conversations or information outside of rethinkobesity.com on the medications that are available, so thats outside of that obesity conversation, but know about some of the medical solutions. We also have tools and sites around the products that are available including Novo Nordisk products.
To view other segments in this video series:
Part 1: Understanding Obesity the Disease
Read more:
Blandine Lacroix Part 2, Weight Loss Tools - Diabetes In Control
