Special report by Dr. Ethan Lazarus, secretary/treasurer of OMA
The American Medical Association (AMA) held its interim meeting in Atlanta on Nov. 14-17. Thank you, Dr. Carl Knopke, for stepping in as the alternate delegate and joining me in representing OMA at this important meeting.

The interim meeting is devoted to the AMA's advocacy efforts. To this end, I hosted the second meeting of the newly formed obesity caucus and met with multiple other state and specialty societies that share the interest of treatment parity for individuals affected by obesity. We continued to plan strategies that the AMA can employ to improve obesity prevention, access, and treatment, including both educational and advocacy approaches.

The House of Delegates (HOD) deliberated over and passed many items of interest, including resolutions to:

1. Work towards EHR interoperability and lobby to remove penalties for failure to achieve meaningful use due to lack of interoperability or decertified EHRs.
2. Support access to preventive and reproductive services for all patients and oppose legislative proposals that would deny established and accepted medical care to any segment of the population.
3. Support a ban on direct-to-consumer advertising for prescription drugs and implantable medical devices.
4. Improve coverage for treatment of lymphedema.
5. Campaign to improve national vaccination rates.
6. Encourage FTC actions to limit anticompetitive behavior by pharmaceutical companies attempting to reduce competition from generic manufacturers.

I'd like to thank OMA for allowing me this opportunity to serve as their AMA delegate.

The American Board of Obesity Medicine (ABOM) had a record-breaking number of applications this year for the obesity medicine certification exam. Our review course is the preferred course for exam preparation, as indicated by the overwhelming number of registrants for the course last fall. With that in mind, we decided to offer the review course twice next year! You can take the Review Course for the ABOM Exam in the spring in San Francisco or in the fall in Chicago (or both).

Our Review Course is among the top-rated resources for exam preparation. See what others who've attended had to say about the course:

• "Very helpful and full of high-level information. I feel confident about what I learned."
• "[It] did an outstanding job targeting the material covered [for] exam preparation."
• "The program was outstanding! I gained a tremendous amount of updated information."
• "The majority of speakers were sensational and knowledgeable."

Ready to start preparing for the ABOM exam? Register online for the Review Course. 

This spring, the marketing-communication committee took on the task of creating a resource that could help us spread the word about obesity medicine. The final product is a series of videos that explain what the disease of obesity is and how obesity medicine clinicians treat obesity differently. You may recognize some of your obesity medicine colleagues starring in:

• What is obesity?
• What is an obesity medicine clinician?
• What does an obesity medicine clinician do?

These videos are a new resource to help you market yourself as an obesity medicine clinician, both to patients and to providers who could refer their patients with obesity to you. Feel free to share the videos on your websites and on social media!  

As a member of OMA, you are now receiving a new benefit of membership -- a complimentary membership in the World Obesity Federation. World Obesity is a global community of more than 50 organizations dedicated to solving the problems of obesity. You can log in to your new World Obesity member account to begin using the benefits of World Obesity membership, which include discounted subscription rates to four official journals, discounted SCOPE online learning courses, access to policies and statistics on the data portal, and more! See a full list of World Obesity member benefits.

Refresh your memory about the research presented during the poster session at Overcoming Obesity 2015. The abstracts for the posters that were on display at the fall conference are now available online. The abstract titled "Do decreases in visceral adipose tissue correlate with physiologic or metabolic improvements in children with severe obesity?" by Dr. Suzanne Cuda was the winner of the Obesity Treatment Foundation's annual poster contest. See all of the abstracts from Overcoming Obesity 2015.