This article demonstrates how pharmacists can improve medication access and affordability for obesity, highlighting key insurance barriers.
Despite soaring demand and prescribing rates, access to anti‐obesity medications (AOM) remains unbalanced due to high manufacturer costs, inadequate insurance coverage, intermittent shortages, and lack of provider knowledge in overcoming medication access barriers. Pharmacists are uniquely positioned to bridge care gaps for people with obesity by facilitating medication management, identifying drug interactions, counseling on lifestyle modification and adverse effects, and providing more frequent follow‐up. Further, pharmacists can use their expertise to assist with AOM access, affordability, and therapeutic interchange. This article highlights the challenges routinely encountered in chronic weight management while offering practical pearls for pharmacists about insurance coverage, prior authorizations, current affordability initiatives, navigating shortages, and the importance of education and advocacy for people living with obesity.
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Komé et al. (2025) studied this question.
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