Joshua Riff

Confronting the Obesity and Diabetes Epidemics

William Dietz, Kelly Close, Sean Duffy, Mark Hyman, Joshua Riff, Hugh Waters

This panel addresses the $3.4 trillion annual economic burden of chronic diseases in the U.S., where obesity drives nearly half the costs and disproportionately affects underserved populations through a broken primary care capacity. Experts from organizations like Cleveland Clinic, Omada, and OnDuo demonstrated that community-based food pharmacy models and digital health platforms can dramatically reverse conditions like diabetes and heart failure while reducing costs by up to 80%. To scale these life-saving interventions, the discussion emphasized an urgent need to shift from episodic "sick care" to value-based reimbursement systems that fund "food as medicine" and community health workers.