When We Talk About Perinatal Weight Issues, We Need to Focus on the Whole Person, Johanna Finkle, MD, Reminds Clinicians

In her presentation Anti-Obesity Medications: What Obstetrician-Gynecologists Need to Know, at the 2025 American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Annual Clinical and Scientific Meeting in Minneapolis, MN, May 16-18, Johanna Finkle, MD, from the University of Kansas Health System, reminded the audience that that not every woman who is carrying excess weight during pregnancy is going to want to have that conversation the first time the topic is raised. But the critical point is that the issue has been introduced and the clinician has essentially opened the door for the discussion.

In an interview with Patient Care^© after her session, Finkle also stressed the importance of focusing on the health parameters that need to be monitored during pregnancy and letting their status guide recommendations. Make sure "you're looking at the whole person...not just assuming that because someone has excess weight, they are unhealthy."

In the short video above, Finkle details the key points she hopes clinicians took away from her presentation, including that glucagon-like peptide-1 agonists should be considered as part of the mix to help women attain healthy weight in the perinatal period.

The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

I think you hit it, you know, on the nail. We need to make sure we’re addressing the weight issue. So, asking patients if they’re interested in talking about their weight—you may not get, you know, a 100% response that they want to discuss it at that visit. But you’ve started the conversation.

And then, afterwards, it’s about knowing what to do with that information. That means looking at the whole person—looking at their health factors—and not just assuming that because someone has excess weight, they’re unhealthy. You want to check health parameters. You want to look at their cholesterol levels, their comprehensive metabolic panel, their hemoglobin A1c. You want to see if they’re having any complications from their weight.

Then you can use that information to explain to the patient why it might be important to lose weight—and how they can go about doing that. What amount of weight should they lose? Again, we usually talk about that 10%. And then helping them achieve that, both through lifestyle modification—exercise, diet, the pillars of obesity medicine—but also with medications.

And that’s what this talk was about: the medications. The GLP-1s, which can now produce 20% weight loss—like tirzepatide. That’s an amazing amount of weight loss. And my patients don’t have a lot of side effects.