Stories

In Brazil, obesity has increased over the last 25 years, from 13 % to 26%. Despite having a lot of information about obesity for health professionals, it is limited for patients with obesity.

To enhance people's knowledge of obesity, we created the NGO Obesidade Brasil, which addresses topics such as obesity being a disease, forms of treatment and diagnosis, prevention, and comorbidities.

Our goals are to provide scientifically-based information on obesity to patients by making people aware that obesity is a chronic disease and reducing prejudice against obese people.

Our project started in August 2019 while it was regulated and added to digital media in February 2020. Our NGO has a website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, where people can ask questions, read articles and watch videos about this chronic disease.

In addition, once a month, we conduct webinars on a specific topic, for example, clinical, surgical, and psychological treatment of obesity.

There were three significant challenges identified by the Obesidade Brasil NGO relating to obesity: limited public access to obesity treatments, the rise of obesity prevalence in low demographic cities, and the understanding of obesity as a chronic disease.

Five months after the NGO was created, it had 6,500 followers combined in all social networks. The NGO reached in each publication an average of 3,000 unique viewers who were primarily female (76%) and young adults (35-44 years old) who live in the main capitals of the country (i.e., São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, and Brasília). We hope to contribute to people's awareness about obesity to improve adherence and demand for treatment while reducing the growth of this disease in our country.