Obesity care has changed significantly in recent years.
There are more treatment options. Science is advancing. And there is growing recognition that obesity is a complex, chronic disease, not a matter of willpower or body size.
But treatment is not just about what happens medically.
A person living with obesity may also be navigating stress, pain, mental health concerns, family responsibilities, cultural expectations, past experiences with weight stigma and barriers to accessing care.
Psychological and behavioural interventions can help address some of those realities. They are one of the three pillars of evidence-informed obesity management, alongside pharmacotherapy and metabolic bariatric surgery.
Yet compared with other areas of obesity treatment, research into psychosocial care remains less coordinated.
A new Canadian study set out to identify where that research should go next.
What should psychosocial obesity research focus on?
In September 2024, 48 researchers, healthcare professionals, administrators, and people with lived experience came together for the National Obesity Psychosocial Research Summit.
Their task was straightforward: identify the most important research priorities for behavioural and psychological interventions in obesity care.
From those conversations, six priorities emerged, revealing several areas where the research needs to get stronger.
Look beyond the number on the scale
One priority challenges a familiar way of judging obesity treatment: relying too heavily on weight or BMI. Those numbers cannot capture the full impact of treatment or be used alone to diagnose obesity.
A person may experience less pain, better mobility, improved mental health and/or quality of life without those changes being fully reflected on the scale.
Researchers identified a need for more consistent ways to measure these outcomes, while still allowing people to define goals that are meaningful to them.
In other words, research needs to get better at measuring the things people actually want their care to improve.
Understand what gets in the way of care
The success of an intervention is not determined only by the intervention itself. Weight stigma can affect whether someone feels safe seeking care, how they experience that care, and how they engage with treatment over time.
Social and environmental factors matter too. So do culture, accessibility, and the realities of everyday life.
The researchers called for more work to understand how these factors influence treatment, and for stigma- and equity-informed thinking to be built into psychosocial care from the beginning.
Move away from one-size-fits-all approaches
What works for one person may not work for another.
Researchers want to better understand what works, for whom, and when.
That includes designing care that responds to different clinical needs, cultures, traditions, and personal circumstances.
It also means studying different ways of delivering care, including virtual support, peer-based models, technology-enabled approaches, and traditional face-to-face care.
Make research easier to use
The summit also identified a more technical, but important, challenge.
Psychosocial obesity studies do not always use consistent approaches to developing, testing, and evaluating interventions. That can make results harder to compare and promising approaches harder to bring into everyday care.
More consistent research approaches could help researchers build on one another’s work, reduce duplication, and make it easier to understand which interventions are ready to be used more broadly.
The group also identified education as a priority. More work is needed to understand how to clearly explain the role of psychological and behavioural support in obesity care to people living with obesity, healthcare professionals, policymakers, and funders.
What these priorities tell us about obesity care and research
Taken together, the six priorities expand the questions obesity researchers need to ask.
Research needs to look beyond whether an intervention works under ideal conditions. It also needs to ask whether people can access it, whether it fits their lives, how success should be measured, and how well it supports people over time.
These priorities give researchers, funders, and healthcare systems a clearer direction for building that evidence.
And they reinforce something that is easy to lose sight of as obesity treatment evolves: better care depends not only on having more treatment options, but on understanding how to support the people receiving them.
Read the research
Research priorities for psychosocial interventions in obesity care: Outcomes from a Canadian research summit
Sockalingam S, Park K, Bacon SL, et al. Obesity Pillars. 2026.
