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Guidelines on Overweight and Obesity: Electronic Textbook ![]() |
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Health and Economic CostsIn 1973, and again in 1977, the John E. Fogarty International Center at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), as part of its preventive medicine series, sponsored two conferences that dealt with obesity as a public health problem; controversy was apparent regarding the cause-and-effect relationship between obesity and ill health (40, 41). In 1985, an NIH Consensus Development Conference was held on the health implications of obesity. This conference provided important national recognition that obesity is a serious health condition that leads to increased morbidity and mortality. The Consensus Development Conference concluded that both prevention and treatment of obesity were medical priorities in the United States (42). In that conference, the terms 'overweight' and 'obesity' were defined as part of a continuum of increasing health risk.
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