Senior citizen obesity counseling proven effective but under-used

A little over a year ago I wrote about the Medicare funded weight-loss counseling program called Intensive Behavior Therapy.

At that time, almost no one knew about it. So I was excited when I got an update from registered dietician, Mary Kaiser who administers the program at Bonner General Health.

“Can we ‘toot our horn’ about our weight loss program?” Kaiser wrote. “I thought it might generate more business if people knew about our success.”

And success it is! There are currently 14 seniors enrolled in the program who have cumulatively lost 281.5 pounds. That’s an average of over 20 pounds per person over a roughly 21 week period.

The success is obviously for those who participated, but let’s take a look at who didn’t. The Census Bureau says that there are 41,585 people in the county, of those, 20.5 percent are over 65 years of age.

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