March 1, 2013

On February 13, WHYY Health and Science reporter Carolyn Beeler wrote about a medical fellowship in pediatric obesity care that was recently established at the Nemours/Alfred I. DuPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Delaware. She quoted Stella Volpe, PhD, professor and Chair of the Nutrition Sciences Department, about the way that these types of positions in obesity care are becoming increasingly more commonplace. "We need to really work on preventing this from happening at all, just like with other chronic diseases that are preventable," Volpe said. "Having said that, we know that with millions of people that's probably not going to happen, and so therefore we still need to have specialized care for when people do get there." Beeler writes that more than one third of children and adolescents in the United States are either obese or overweight.