Provincial, federal efforts team up for obesity prevention, management strategies

From left, Lisa Schaffer, executive director for Obesity Canada,, and Kim Simmonds, chief executive officer of Primary Care Alberta, speak to reporters on Aug. 24, 2026, about a collaboration between their two organizations to treat and manage obesity. (Brandon Lynch/CTV News Edmonton)

Health arms of the provincial and federal governments have agreed to work together to develop obesity prevention and management strategies.

Primary Care Alberta and Obesity Canada signed an agreement in April to develop strategies within the province’s health-care system.

Nearly one in three Canadians is considered obese, according to a provincial media release on Monday, adding that the economic cost of not treating the condition reached $27.6 billion three years ago and that those costs include repercussions for employment, productivity and income.

The April memorandum of understanding came a year after Alberta became the first province to recognize obesity as a chronic disease.

Kim Simmonds, chief executive officer of Primary Care Alberta, said the development of a provincial “pathway hub” not only makes it “easy electronically to be able to pull that information down” and provide it to patients, it also lets people know where to go, when to go there, and what the kind of criteria are for the next steps."

“(Obesity) changes your metabolic pathways,” Simmonds told reporters at a media conference. “What it means then is you’re more at risk of other things like diabetes, heart disease, etc., so working to ensure that we have a good pathway for obesity actually helps (treatment for) probably five or six other chronic diseases as well.”

Lisa Schaffer, executive director for Obesity Canada, said the Primary Care Alberta pathways hub “helps make the right thing to do the easy thing to do.”

“It is a great way to get the right information to people so that they can make those kinds of decisions, so that we aren’t starting just with diet and exercise,” Schaffer said. “This is complex and nuanced, so how can we approach using the three core pillars of care that we’ve identified, which are pharmacotherapy, psychological support, as well as surgical intervention if needed?

“Those are the core treatment pillars, but we want everybody to be happy and healthy and have a good diet alongside that, and that’s a bigger conversation probably than this (memorandum of understanding), but something that we should all be paying attention to.”

Primary Care Alberta said the partnership will support the execution of its chronic disease prevention and management priorities and bolster the capacity of Alberta’s primary and community care teams to deliver integrated, team-based obesity prevention and care.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Brandon Lynch