Clinical

Our clinical team continues to excel with clinical service, patient satisfaction, national recognition, and regional and local leadership in the areas of research, education and advocacy.  With continued increase in demand for our services, we added two more Nurse Practitioners in October 2025 (for a total of 4) who will begin seeing patients independently in March of 2026 We are also interviewing for a new physician to add in 2026.  Together, this should greatly increase our capacity to see more patients and improve access. We continue to see a high volume of referrals so that despite increased capacity, at the end of 2025 we still had over 1700 new referrals waiting for appointments. In addition to seeking more clinicians, we have continued education of the local, regional and national workforce in obesity medicine best practices to meet these needs.

In 2025, we supported 10+ programs nationally through individual coaching and teaching. We continue to improve our transition program to safely allow patients to continue their current advanced weight management therapies as they transition out of pediatric weight management into adult care. We have done specialized advance obesity treatment and medication prescribing seminars co-led by our pharmacist and a physician for CMH subspecialist who also serve patients with obesity including Sleep, Endocrinology, Nephrology, and transplant Team in 2025. We have plans to include Hepatology, Adolescent Subspeciality, and Primary care (at both KU and CMH) in 2026. We also have an endocrinologist joining us in weight management 2 times per month (a former fellow we trained); this year we have the pediatric chief resident working with us weekly to increase her skills which she will take out into her primary care practice locally when she finishes in June.   



 Our patient volumes continue to increase and in 2025 we managed 1400 patients seen in 4411 visits. We continue to see improvements in clinical processes through our multiple Quality Improvement projects. This year, projects have focused on the measurement of body composition in those pre and post bariatric surgery and on highly effective obesity medicines, especially GLP1s. We have now had our pharmacy technician and pharmacist with our team for over one year. This added support has led to improved insurance authorizations, better access to medications, and enhanced pharmacy support for medication selection, safety and efficacy. We have noted significant increase in prescribing of medications and a larger percentage of prescriptions sent to CMH pharmacies owing to the excellent service families receive from the pharmacy staff. Our team developed a packet of information for our patients starting GLP-1 Receptor Agonists, to assure adequate fluid, protein and vitamin intake,  healthy routines and  plans to minimize and address side effects. We continue to present our quality improvement projects nationally, including the 2025 Obesity Society meeting: the results of the post-surgery hydration project and the bio-impedance scale intervention.

Our net promoter score remained high at 93.3% compared to the CMH average of 87%, and we had an increase in our provider ratings from  91% (2024) to 95% (2025). 

“I cannot say enough good things about the team. They treat my daughter with respect and kindness plus go above and beyond to build her up. We are so thrilled to be a part of this team's care. I feel hope as her mother that there is a team with us on her health journey that will set her up to be successful and thrive!” (Parent of 11 yr old)

We continue to improve our family-based behavioral groups, keeping up with changes in the field of Obesity Medicine and the advent of highly effective obesity medications. Our ability to offer these intensive health behavior and lifestyle treatment options aligns with the AAP clinical practice guideline and is vital to comprehensive treatment given the scarcity of these types of programs nationally.  Drs. Shook, Hampl, Dreyer Gillette and Laroche continue to work on a REACH grant from the CDC in partnership with investigators at UMKC that includes further cultural adaptation of our family-based behavioral treatment and training providers to implement this program at a local federally qualified health center. They have obtained additional funding to translate and culturally tailor the program for Spanish speaking families and to test the new Spanish curriculum in two groups of patients. Drs. Hampl (MPI), Dreyer-Gillette and Laroche are part of an NIH grant to train 30 federally qualified health centers throughout the state to provide family-based and individual behavioral treatment for child and adult obesity.  Dr. Laroche has an R01 testing a combination of this family-based treatment with community health workers to improve engagement, retention and outcomes and examine parent bandwidth.

Clinical research continues to flourish. In 2025 we completed  recruitment for a Phenotyping study (Sweeney, site PI) to further the field of personalized medicine in obesity care.  We continue to recruit for the special needs weight management clinic registry (Dr. Dreyer Gillette, PI), a randomized clinical trial of setmelanotide for rare genetic disorders of obesity (Dr. Sweeney, Site PI), and  a pilot on muscle changes in patients on GLP1 Receptor Agonists (Dr. Shook, PI). We began a collaboration with genomic medicine, pharmacogenetics, hepatology, and endocrinology to study outcomes and predictors of WM success including genetics for children on GLP-1s.

Our collaboration submitted our first R01 in December. In addition, we collaborate with other areas, assist other Children’s Mercy researchers recruiting from our population, and have a standardized clinic recruitment process and training. Our research assistants and clinical trial coordinators are integrated into the clinical team, sharing in clinic huddles and team celebrations.  Our clinical staff has continued to grow as a highly functioning team, allowing us to excel in direct service, while continuing to be national leaders in improving care for children with obesity through advocacy, education and research.