• Mohammad E Khamseh, Zahra Emami, Aida Iranpour, Reyhaneh Mahmoodian, Erfan Amouei, Adnan Tizmaghz, Yousef Moradi, and Hamid R Baradaran.
• Endocrine Research Center, Institute of Endocrinology and Metabolism, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
• Arch Iran Med. 2023 Sep 1; 26 (9): 529541529-541.

BackgroundObesity is a serious chronic disease that adversely affects health and quality of life. However, a significant percentage of people do not participate in or adhere to weight loss programs. Therefore, a multidisciplinary approach is needed to identify critical barriers to effective obesity management and to examine health practitioners' attitudes and behaviors towards effective obesity treatment.MethodsThis systematic review was conducted in accordance with PRISMA 2020. Eligible studies were identified through a systematic review of the literature using Medline, Scopus, Cochrane, Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Embase databases from January 1, 2011 to March 2, 2021.ResultsA total of 57 articles were included. Data on 12663 physicians were extracted from a total of 35 quantitative articles. Some of the most commonly perceived attitude issues included "obesity has a huge impact on overall health", "obesity is a disease" and "HCPs are to blame". Health professionals were more inclined to believe in "using BMI to assess obesity," "advice to increase physical activity," and "diet/calorie reduction advice." The major obstacles to optimal treatment of obesity were "lack of motivation", "lack of time" and "lack of success".ConclusionAlthough the majority of health care professionals consider obesity as a serious disease which has a large impact on overall health, counseling for lifestyle modification, pharmacologic or surgical intervention occur in almost half of the visits. Increasing the length of physician visits as well as tailoring appropriate training programs could improve health care for obesity.© 2023 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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