Recognition was the first step. Now, we’re working to improve obesity care in Alberta.
By Lisa Schaffer, Executive Director
In March 2025, Alberta became the first province in Canada to formally recognize obesity as a chronic disease.
For people living with obesity who have been told that obesity comes down to willpower, personal choices or simply not trying hard enough, that recognition meant something. It reflects what science has told us for years: obesity is a complex chronic disease, and it should be understood and treated that way.
But recognition also raises an important question: what changes because of it?
Today, Obesity Canada and Primary Care Alberta are announcing a new Memorandum of Understanding focused on advancing evidence-informed obesity management and prevention within Alberta’s primary care system.
Through this collaboration, we’ll explore opportunities to build better-connected care pathways, support education for primary and community care teams, bring evidence into practice, and reduce weight bias and stigma.
It’s encouraging to see that this work is supported by the provincial government as well. Justin Wright, Minister of Primary and Preventative Health Services, has emphasized that recognizing obesity as a chronic disease should mean access to “respectful, evidence-informed care closer to home.”
For people living with obesity, those things can shape whether a healthcare experience feels like care at all.
From recognizing obesity to treating it like other chronic diseases
When Alberta recognized obesity as a chronic disease in 2025, we celebrated that milestone while also being clear that recognition could not be the finish line.
People living with obesity have faced healthcare systems that do not consistently recognize or treat obesity like other chronic diseases. They may encounter oversimplified advice, weight bias, fragmented care or healthcare professionals who have had limited education in evidence-informed obesity management.
That is the opportunity with this collaboration: giving primary care teams the knowledge, tools and connections they need to support people over time, while building care around health and individual needs rather than assumptions about body size.
Primary Care Alberta brings provincial leadership and a deep understanding of how primary and community care is organized and delivered in Alberta. Obesity Canada brings national expertise in obesity, education, knowledge translation, lived experience and clinical guidance.
As PCA CEO Kim Simmonds has noted, no single organization can address the growing impact of chronic disease alone. Bringing our complementary strengths together gives us a strong foundation for turning evidence into approaches that work within Alberta’s primary care system and improve people’s experiences of healthcare.
Bringing clinical practice guidelines into primary care
The MOU outlines several areas where we can work together, from strengthening primary care pathways and education to improving clinical guidance, supporting healthy pregnancy care, and reducing weight bias and stigma.
One area that is particularly important to Obesity Canada is the opportunity to bring evidence and principles from the Canadian Adult Obesity Clinical Practice Guideline into Alberta’s primary and community care system.
The Guideline has helped shift how obesity is understood and managed in Canada, moving away from a narrow focus on weight loss and toward individualized care that considers health, function, quality of life and the underlying drivers of obesity.
But evidence only makes a difference when people can use it.
For a busy primary care team, that might mean clearer guidance on how to assess obesity, how to begin a respectful conversation, what treatment options exist, or when and where to refer someone for additional support.
For a person living with obesity, it can mean something much simpler but just as important: being listened to, having their health concerns taken seriously and receiving care informed by current science rather than outdated assumptions.
Our role is to help make that evidence easier to use in real-world care.
Building this into the Alberta health system
This work is already beginning.
PCA is developing a Chronic Disease Prevention and Management Action Plan, with obesity included as a focus area. The newly established Obesity Care Partnership Steering Committee, with representatives from PCA and Obesity Canada, will help support that work.
That system-level focus is important.
Obesity care in Canada has long been fragmented, with access shaped by where someone lives, what services are available and which healthcare professionals they can reach. Better care cannot depend on luck.
Because obesity is a chronic disease, our systems need to be equipped to manage it as one.
That means building knowledge and capacity into primary care, improving coordination across services and making evidence-informed, respectful obesity care easier to find.
Turning our strategy into action
This initiative reflects the direction we set in Obesity Canada’s 2026–2029 Strategic Plan: shifting systems, advancing care and reshaping narratives.
Our collaboration with Primary Care Alberta touches all three.
Recognizing obesity as a chronic disease helps reshape the narrative. Bringing evidence into primary care helps advance care. Building obesity into chronic disease planning helps shift the system itself.
This is what those priorities are intended to look like in practice: not three separate streams of work, but connected changes that move evidence, systems and public understanding in the same direction.
More than one million Albertans are living with obesity. The measure of this work will not simply be whether a new pathway, educational resource or plan is created. It will be whether those changes make care easier to navigate, help healthcare professionals feel better equipped to provide it, and improve the experience of the people the system is meant to serve.
Alberta’s recognition of obesity as a chronic disease created an opportunity to approach obesity differently.
Our work with Primary Care Alberta is about helping turn that recognition into something people can experience: better-informed healthcare professionals, better-connected care, and a health system better equipped to treat obesity as the chronic disease it is.
