28/10/2025
It has been a pleasure working with such a motivated team and we hope to see some much needed progress in this space. We are a group of primarily GPs that are passionate about the delivery of obesity management to not only our own patients, but the wider public. Unlike most other chronic diseases, there are effective treatments available in Australia for obesity management but they are very poorly publicly funded. Five partially funded visits to share between dietitians, physios and exercise physiologists, among other allied health practitioners per year, and a proportionally small number of publicly funded bariatric surgeries do not begin to meet the needs of 2/3 of Australians living with overweight and obesity.
This isn’t about getting everyone to look the same, or to meet society’s expectations of what health should look like. It’s not even about BMI. It’s about helping the people living with overweight or obesity that are also suffering from diabetes, heart disease, obstructive sleep apnoea, effects on their mental health among many other potential conditions that would improve with the management of overweight or obesity. It’s about providing the right care for all that need it, not just the patients that can afford it. Not everyone will need treatment, but we want to be a country where those that need it can access it.
Credit to the team: Mark Mellor Terri-Lynne South Remon Eskendar
Angela Kwong Julie Manasseh Dr Daiva Kuzinkoviene Dev Kawol Catherine Bacus Sharmila Sambandam Dr Helena Morris Alex Craven Clare Mullen Samantha Hocking Milan Piya Sof Andrikopoulos
