The Endocrine Society is soliciting comments on the guideline titled, "Pharmacologic Management of Obesity: An Endocrine Society Clinical Practice Guideline." The purpose of this guideline is to provide a practical, clinical approach to the pharmacological management of obesity.
The Endocrine Society has recently invested in our clinical practice guidelines program to improve the quality of our guidelines and their adherence to international standards. This includes increased adherence to GRADE methodology and an expansion of the evidence reviews that support the recommendations. Newly published Endocrine Society guidelines have a new format and a more focused scope. Some key point of these changes are below.
Guideline Recommendations
The appearance of the individual recommendations remains unchanged, since historically, the Society has used the GRADE system to classify our recommendations. However, only a minority of our previously published recommendations were supported by the systematic reviews that are considered essential to the GRADE process. The Society has dedicated substantial resources to increasing the number of evidence reviews per guideline, and as such, each recommendation in our newly published guidelines will be underpinned by such a review, improving the methodological rigor of our guidelines.
Scope
In the past, Endocrine Society guideline panels were not limited in the number of recommendations that they could make because they were not constrained by the number of systematic reviews that could be conducted, leading to a “textbook approach” to guideline development. Our new guideline panels have been charged with developing a more focused scope that addresses the most important clinical questions for a topic. These questions are prioritized by the panel through a rigorous and transparent process that is part of the GRADE methodology.
Evidence-to-Decision Framework
Each guideline recommendation is accompanied by an Evidence-to-Decision (EtD) framework. This framework is a documentation of the decision-making process that the panel used when making their recommendations. The factors included in the EtD ensure that panels consider the most important criteria when making the recommendation. This framework will be provided as a supplement to help users understand the judgements made by the panel and the evidence supporting those judgments.
Please provide any necessary comments by July 27, 2026. If you have any questions, please email guidelines@endocrine.org.
