The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) have issued the following statement: The Catholic bishops have long supported access to life-affirming healthcare for all, and the conscience rights of everyone involved in the complex process of providing that healthcare.

That is why we raised two serious objections to the “preventive services” regulation issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in August 2011.

First, we objected to the rule forcing private health plans—nationwide, by the stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen—to cover sterilization and contraception, including drugs that may cause abortion. All the other mandated “preventive services” prevent disease, and pregnancy is not a disease.Moreover, forcing plans to cover abortifacients violates existing federal conscience laws. Therefore, we called for the rescission of the mandate altogether.

Second, we explained that the mandate would impose a burden of unprecedented reach and severity on the consciences of those who consider such “services” immoral: insurers forced to write policies including this coverage; employers and schools forced to sponsor and subsidize the coverage; and individual employees and students forced to pay premiums for the coverage.

We therefore urged HHS, if it insisted on keeping the mandate, to provide a conscience exemption for all of these stakeholders—not just the extremely small subset of “religious employers” that HHS proposed to exempt initially.

The President has done two things.

First, he has decided to retain HHS’s nationwide mandate of insurance coverage of sterilization and contraception, including some abortifacients. This is both unsupported in the law and remains a grave moral concern. We cannot fail to reiterate this, even as so many would focus exclusively on the question of religious liberty.

Second, the President has announced some changes in how that mandate will be administered, which is still unclear in its details. As far as we can tell at this point, the change appears to have the following basic contours:

• It would still mandate that all insurers must include coverage for the objectionable services in all the policies they would write. At this point, it would appear that self-insuring religious employers, and religious insurance companies, are not exempt from this mandate.
• It would allow non-profit, religious employers to declare that they do not offer such coverage. But the employee and insurer may separately agree to add that coverage. The employee would not have to pay any additional amount to obtain this coverage, and the coverage would be provided as a part of the employer’s policy, not as a separate rider.
• Finally, we are told that the one-year extension on the effective date (from August 1, 2012 to August 1, 2013) is available to any non-profit religious employer who desires it, without any government application or approval process.

These changes require careful moral analysis, and moreover, appear subject to some measure of change. But we note at the outset that the lack of clear protection for key stakeholders—for self-insured religious employers; for religious and secular for-profit employers; for secular non-profit employers; for religious insurers; and for individuals—is unacceptable and must be corrected.

And in the case where the employee and insurer agree to add the objectionable coverage, that coverage is still provided as a part of the objecting employer’s plan, financed in the same way as the rest of the coverage offered by the objecting employer. This, too, raises serious moral concerns.

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In January 2012, Obesity Action Coalition (OAC) and Obesity PPM will launch a long-term online educational initiative to increase understanding of the complexity of obesity and its many causes. The disease of obesity impacts individuals physically, emotionally, economically and socially.

This initiative will look at various factors, both controllable and uncontrollable, impacting individuals affected by obesity. Running throughout 2012 and 2013, the initiative will take a three-pronged approach: a 14-part series of publicly available webinars, articles addressing aspects of Obesity PPM’s Twelve Pillars model, and social media enriching the dialogue about each event topic. The first live online event will take place in late January 2012.

The Twelve Pillars model describes the relationships between the two categories of factors that impact obesity: individual factors and population-level factors. The six individual factors are cognition, addiction, nutrition, endocrinology and metabolism, exercise and activity level, and sleep, stress and immunity.

The six population level factors are the education system and parenting, workplace and business culture, community and lifestyle planning, food policy, production and delivery, healthcare policy and delivery, and financial instruments and funding.

Following the introductory event in January, each webinar will address one of the twelve factors from the individual and population levels and its relationship to the broader context of obesity, with the final event addressing the relationship between obesity, genetics, and the environmental triggering of gene expression.

The webinars will feature guest speakers, or panels of speakers, providing the latest unbiased, up-to-date information on these topics. By delivering these educational events at no cost to a broad audience, the OAC and Obesity PPM will advance their shared mission to reduce weight bias, social stigma, and discrimination. The content will be appropriate for all audiences seeking a broader understanding of obesity.

Further, by presenting multiple perspectives on controversial topics, the OAC and Obesity PPM will bring to light the extent of scientific, clinical and social work that must be done to both develop effective obesity prevention strategies and improve access to treatment for those affected by obesity.

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