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Canadians Deserve Better - Economic and Public Health Impacts of Not Addressing Obesity

Canada’s lack of action in addressing the needs of people living with obesity is coming at a cost. It's costing us financially. It's hurting our healthcare system. Most importantly, it's restricting the quality of life of the 8.7 million Canadians living with this disease.

Published Nov 12, 2024 at 5:05am

Lisa Schaffer
By
Lisa Schaffer
Canadians Deserve Better - Economic and Public Health Impacts of Not Addressing Obesity
A man speaking with a medical professional

Canada’s lack of action in addressing the needs of people living with obesity is coming at a cost. It's costing us financially. It's hurting our healthcare system. Most importantly, it's restricting the quality of life of the 8.7 million Canadians living with this disease.

Research conducted by our team at Obesity Canada, in collaboration with local and international partners, suggests governments’ failure to recognize and treat obesity as a chronic disease is costing the Canadian economy upwards of $27 billion annually.

Our report, Modeling the Cost of Inaction in Treating Obesity in Canada, takes an alternative approach by exploring the economic, social, and public health repercussions of continual political inaction on obesity.

Historically the focus has been on the burden of obesity and how much people living with the disease are costing the nation. This narrative is not helpful. It is, in fact, harmful, leaving the burden on those living with obesity. With this report, we flip the script.

Compared to similar research conducted in 2021, our report found the projected economic cost has jumped by 20 per cent, including a $5.9 billion burden on Canada's healthcare system, which faced an additional 19 million physician visits linked to obesity last year.

In addition to direct public health costs, not treating obesity indirectly hurts the Canadian economy in other ways.

Obesity has a significant impact on the workforce, with the report showing an estimated impact of $21.7 billion due to increased absenteeism and presenteeism, additional disability pension payments, and reduced productivity.

People with obesity are more likely to be unemployed, costing the Canada Pension Plan millions every year. The data also suggests obesity exacerbates the gender pay gap, as women living with this chronic disease make less money on average than their male counterparts, despite higher obesity rates in men.

The most frustrating part? Effective evidence-based interventions, including ways to treat, prevent and, and manage obesity are available. Getting the government to take serious action to improve care for people with obesity has the potential to save the economy millions, if not billions.

What's holding us back? The prolific misunderstanding of obesity and those of us who live in bigger bodies. So, let's dispel some myths.

Obesity is about health, not size. Not all larger people have obesity, just as not all smaller people live without the disease.

That idea runs contrary to the methods used by Health Canada, which continues to measure obesity rates through body mass index (BMI) despite the fact that the metric is considered outdated. Using size as the only metric fuels the misconception that obesity is a self-inflicted wound when, in fact, it is a chronic disease.

That’s right, obesity is recognized as a chronic disease by several leading entities in the public health space, including the World Health Organization, the American Medical Association, and importantly, our own Canadian Medical Association.

While no provincial or territorial health authorities have yet joined that growing consensus, Health Canada has approved several medical interventions for people living with obesity. These treatments are designed to reduce weight or reduce the risk of regain after prior weight loss in patients. However, unlike treatments for other chronic diseases, they are not covered by any provincial or federal drug plans.

As such, people with obesity must also bear the financial burden of living with this chronic disease.

We've reached a tipping point that cannot be ignored. The world's leading health organizations are recognizing obesity for what it is, but Canadian governments haven't taken the corresponding actions that would enable better care and treatment. It makes no sense.

We need our policymakers and politicians. We need our drug benefits providers and our employers. We need everybody to work together to get this right and approach obesity with the rigour and care it deserves.

It won't be easy—this is a tangled ball of string lights—but we have to start somewhere. The good news is that we have the tools to get us there.

The best place to start? Improving society's understanding of obesity. We need to ensure that governments and citizens alike recognize that people living with obesity are not at fault for their chronic disease.

In fact, obesity is much more a cause than an effect, as it can contribute to other downstream adverse health conditions, like heart disease, diabetes, and certain cancers.

Once we have that understanding, it should be evident that improving access to care is non-negotiable. Obesity Canada's numbers suggest one in every 10 premature deaths among Canadians aged 20 to 64 is directly attributable to obesity, a statistic that should be more than enough for governments to give this issue the attention it so clearly merits.

The next step, we need to improve access to care for those who need it. We have medical interventions, but we need to make them more available.

But, for that to happen, we need political buy-in from both the provincial and federal governments.

Progress requires both top-down and bottom-up solutions. We've got to get our systems working, but we also need to foster an improved social narrative and be kinder to ourselves, our peers, and our loved ones.

This is bigger than obesity. The loss of life, the public health burden, and the economic costs—a great deal of it is preventable. We can’t afford to stay idle. We need to start untangling the ball of lights and get back to being the Canada I know we can be—one where we take care of each other and think about the collective good.

This is a call to action. We deserve better. We have the solutions, and we know who can help remove some of the biggest challenges. And it is not people living with obesity. We need our political leaders to get on board.

It's time to get to work.

Presented by Obesity Canada, sponsored by Eli Lilly Canada

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of Obesity Canada and Eli Lilly Canada and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of iPolitics.

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