The Dangers of Curtailing Free Speech on Campus

The answer to surging antisemitism on campus is not to curtail free speech. Anguish over mounting anti-Jewish sentiment, and the seemingly ad hoc scramble of American universities to define their duties toward targeted students, is understandable. But in a pluralistic society predicated on the right to speak, antisemitism cannot be eliminated by banning or punishing noxious sentiment. Too many university administrators, Members of Congress, and other influentials mistakenly believe that, when it comes to hateful speech, the choices are to prohibit it outright or instead let its pollution seep freely through communities. That is a false choice. Antisemitism, like other forms of bigotry, must be unequivocally repudiated and countered. But the U.S. Constitution and our private universities’ commitments to free expression and academic freedom demand that the tools to accomplish this goal respect rather than restrict speech.

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The recent surge in antisemitism on campus and in the wider society is alarming. While various forms of bigotry – including anti-Palestinian and Islamophobia are also surging – incidents of antisemitism are at a record high. The main threats come not from speech but from actions: violence and violent threats against Jews disruptions of classes or talks; vandalism; and ideological litmus tests being applied in classrooms. Commonplace slogans can be interpreted as annihilationist. The tearing down of hostage posters, including those depicting the elderly and children, send a message that innocent Jewish lives don’t matter.

The menacing of Jews has uncorked fear that age-old hatreds were only dormant, lying in wait. Campus norms have evolved to shield other marginalized groups and bring about a more inclusive campus. Over the last decade, campus communities have rightly become sensitized to racial slurs, stereotypes, and microaggressions that can stoke feelings of exclusion. Even five years ago, reference to the n-word was not unheard of in the college classroom; whether in a quote from literature or illustrate a legal doctrine. In recent years instructors were put on notice that the word, regardless of intent and context, was widely considered deeply offensive. Once alerted, many voluntarily refrained from its use, not wanting to stoke tension or hard feelings. The use of preferred gender pronouns has also come to be more widely accepted on the basis that that people deserve a choice in how they are identified and described. We have begun to adapt to the premise that living together in a diverse, pluralistic society demands a measure of respect for individual difference, even when that extends to what we do or don’t say.  When it comes to language that can be code for genocide or play on antisemitic stereotypes, Jewish students are now drawing attention to how words may land.

For the most part, though, these expectations have been enforced not through rules and punishments but with informal taboos and spreading awareness of heterogeneity and the need to avoid gratuitous offense. Some free speech defenders have rightly pointed out that while increased conscientiousness of difference may be good in theory, it can readily cross over into a climate of censorious in which topics such as affirmative action, immigration, or care for transgender youth become too risky to discuss. The problem intensifies when unofficial awareness raising hardens into institutional mandates policing speech. Formal prohibitions can foster grievances among those who believe that open debate – and specifically their own dissenting opinions – are being muzzled. Universities have exacted reprisals against students and professors for voicing provocative or offensive views and sought to suspend students organizations that challenge prevailing orthodoxies. Yet recent experience attests to the futility of trying to subdue bigotry by quashing speech: official prohibitions are inevitably subject to interpretation and charges of hypocrisy; those who believe their ideas are disfavored become aggrieved and resentful, sometimes grandstanding their way into even more clout; and chilling effects unavoidably reach beyond the narrow parameters of enumerated speech restrictions.

Read More: Calling Out Terrorism Shouldn’t Be an Issue of Free Speech

Now, the tables have been turned. With the upsurge of antisemitism on campuses, some free speech defenders have newfound appreciation of what it means for students to feel deep-seated unease linked to their racial, religious or national identity. When hostile chants, face-to-face confrontations, and rowdy demonstrations  are tied to real-world violence, the boundary-line between psychological and physical safety can blur. The feelings are compounded by gaps noted  between the protections afforded other minorities as compared to Jews. Many campus Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs, including Harvard’s for example, have lacked a mandate to tackle antisemitism, much less expertise on how to do so.

Campus constituencies are right to insist that antisemitism take its place alongside other forms of bigotry as a pervasive scourge that is recognized as inimical to the open and equal learning environment that universities are legally bound to provide. But just as institutional efforts to police speech about race and gender have sometimes bred a chilling campus environment, so could new rules and policies aimed to declare antisemitic rhetoric and tropes out of bounds.

Instead campus leaders have other tools. Several have created antisemitism task forces. Those efforts focus on proven methods to tamp down prejudices regardless of what group they are directed toward: education, awareness-raising, building mutual support and solidarity between diverse campus constituencies, and elevating the visibility and influence of Jewish voices on campus. Equity and student life personnel should be educated about the many forms that antisemitism takes, and that it includes some (though not all) efforts to demonize the State of Israel. They must learn to treat antisemitism as they do other forms of intolerance. Transparent, viewpoint-neutral policy enforcement on protests and postering can prevent aggressive campaigning from interfering unduly with dorm or classroom life.

Augmented security can allay fears of physical confrontation. University leaders can demonstrate solidarity with targeted individuals and institutions – showing up for a meal at a Hillel house or meeting with aggrieved alumni and students. They can use their bully pulpits to repudiate antisemitism outright, ensuring that their message comes across not just to embattled Jews, but to all. Ultimately, the best antidote to antisemitism is a campus that fosters open dialogue across divergent views, and does not let individual identity get in the way of treating all campus constituents as equal members of a shared community.

Whether its Justice Louis Brandeis expounding foundational ideas on free speech from the U.S. Supreme Court bench or Jews leading the ACLU’s defense of Nazi’s right to march in Skokie, Illinois in 1977, Jewish Americans have been prominent in the defense of free speech throughout United States history. They have done so partly on grounds that – as a vulnerable minority – Jews have a special stake in ensuring the protection of their own right to speak out, defend themselves, and argue for change. Amid the clamor to address antisemitism, free speech protections must remain recognized as a shield to protect vulnerable minorities rather than a sword to wound them.

source https://time.com/6548051/6548051/

The Message COP28 Just Sent the Business World

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Just as COP28 began two weeks ago, I wrote that one reason U.N. climate conferences matter is because of the signal they send to the private sector. In eight years, “Paris aligned” has become the shorthand for businesses that say they’re decarbonizing in accordance with the Paris Agreement.

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Now that COP28 has wrapped, it’s useful to ask: what is the market signal that emerged in Dubai?

The text of the COP28 deal—known as the U.A.E. Consensus—calls on countries to transition from fossil fuels and to scale up renewable energy rapidly. A debate has already emerged on how much that deal matters. Sultan Al Jaber, this year’s COP president, delivered a triumphant address proclaiming that the talks had “set the world in the right direction.” Meanwhile, many civil society groups and vulnerable countries have decried it as toothless. “A litany of loopholes,” Anne Rasmussen, Samoa’s top negotiator, declared on behalf of small island states minutes after it was gavelled in.

It is true that the voluntary deal doesn’t commit countries to much of anything. Oil and gas companies surely won’t suddenly see the light and pull back on drilling in response to it. And financial institutions won’t reduce interest rates out of nowhere for solar projects in emerging economies.

And yet the fact that negotiators reached a deal at all offers an important, positive market signal. COP28 occurred amid significant headwinds. Two major wars are raging, dividing the countries represented in Dubai. The political case for climate policy has grown more complicated in developed economies, where inflationary pressures have made citizens skeptical of anything that might raise costs. And many low- and middle-income countries face extreme economic turmoil, which could be aided with a lift from rich countries that have thus far been reluctant.

With all these headwinds, there was no guarantee that negotiators could reach an agreement at all, and yet they did. It’s an indicator that climate change remains a priority, to the officials who gathered in Dubai and the constituencies watching back at home. And it’s a signal that countries will continue to collaborate on climate change amid other challenges. For those worried that the energy transition has stalled, the deal offers a powerful rejoinder that at the very least political forces remain supportive. Indeed, a Dec. 13 research note from investment bank UBS suggested that the deal would drive “recovery in investor confidence around many climate- and emissions-related investment themes.”

But the final deal is not the only way to assess the conference. Throughout the course of the summit, executives from across sectors roamed the gargantuan conference center and met across hotel ballrooms and side events in Dubai. As I’ve previously written, these private sector officials traveled to Dubai for a variety of reasons, but one thing their presence underscored to me is that companies and financiers have woken up to the enormous economic opportunity presented by efforts to tackle climate change. In the background, companies did deals and announced new programs with significant capital at play.

To paraphrase what one executive told me at a reception: business came to COP28 because that’s where the action is. Businesses that ignore the opportunities in the energy transition risk missing out.

source https://time.com/6548067/cop28-message-to-the-business-world/

The Government Finally Did Something About Robocalls

Anyone with a mobile phone knows the unpleasant sensation of answering a call from an unfamiliar number only to hear a pre-recorded marketing or scam pitch from a company you have no interest in patronizing. Around 33 million robocalls are made each day to Americans, according to the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC)—more than 50 billion a year.

This is more than just an annoyance; in 2022, around 68 million Americans lost over $29 billion to scam callers, according to NCLC. These calls also make people less likely to answer their phone or trust valid phone calls they do receive, making the nation’s significant telecommunications infrastructure less valuable. 

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One of the most frustrating things about these calls, says Margot Saunders, senior counsel at NCLC, is that they are largely illegal. Government regulations say that a telemarketing call is only legal to a cell phone or residential line if the recipient of the call has provided “prior express written consent” to that call. (This is similar to rules of the National Do Not Call Registry,  though consumers must opt in to that registry through the website of the Federal Trade Commission.) But often, the sellers and the telemarketers calling for them don’t have this consent.

The reason they’re getting away with continuing to make these calls is that the sellers, often big well-known companies, hire telemarketing firms to make the calls on their behalf. Often, these telemarketing firms buy consumer information—and, they argue, consent—from other companies, in a billion-dollar business called lead generation. Lead generators typically take one agreement from a consumer providing consent and sell that agreement to many different callers and sellers, who themselves resell it to many others. A consumer might have signed up to receive a call from one seller—say a car insurance quote—and then unwittingly clicked a box agreeing to be contacted by hundreds or thousands of companies loosely affiliated with the car insurance company. 

On Wednesday, Dec. 13, the government made it much harder for sellers to make calls to numbers obtained from the lead generation industry. In a 4-to-1 vote, the Federal Communications Commission approved regulations that explicitly say that telemarketing robocalls are allowed only if the actual seller, not just the telemarketing company, has gotten written consent from the specific consumer. 

“Today we put an end to this loophole,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said, at the FCC meeting. “That means consumers get back the power to pick who they want to communicate with and when.”

The vote should help cut down on the number of robocalls made. Each illegal call, according to Congress, can lead to $500 in damages. “It will be much  more difficult for sellers to try and escape responsibility,” Saunders says. The Electronic Privacy Information Center projected that the vote would eliminate the “great majority” of unwanted telemarketing calls and texts. 

Of course, it could be a little while before anything changes. If companies continue to flaunt the rules, regulators may need consumers to turn them in and file lawsuits to hold those companies accountable. That’s not easy to do, says Saunders—you’d have to answer a robocall, find out who the seller is, and then file a lawsuit under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Many consumers may not have the time or the patience for that.

Still, the industry is preparing for a wave of new lawsuits under the Act. A defense attorney told Reuters that he expected to see lawsuit filings double or even triple going forward.

source https://time.com/6513036/robocalls-government-action/

From New York to Tokyo, Stock Markets Across the Globe Have Rallied in 2023

NEW YORK — It’s been a great year for stock markets around the world. Wall Street’s rally has been front and center, with the U.S. stock market the world’s largest and its clear leader in performance in recent years. The S&P 500 is on track to return more than 20% for the third time in the last five years, and its gangbusters performance has brought it back within 2% of its record set at the start of 2022. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at a record high Wednesday.

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Even in Japan, which has been home to some of the world’s most disappointing stocks for decades, the market marched upward to touch its highest level since shortly after its bubble burst in 1989.

Across developed and emerging economies, stocks have powered ahead in 2023 as inflation has regressed, even with wars raging in hotspots around the world. Globally, inflation is likely to ease to 6.9% this year from 8.7% in 2022, according to the International Monetary Fund.

The expectation is for inflation to cool even further next year. That has investors feeling better about the path of interest rates, which have shot higher around much of the world to get inflation under control. Such hopes have been more than enough to offset a slowdown in global economic growth, down to an estimated 3% this year from 3.5% last year, according to the IMF.

This year’s glaring exception for global stock markets has been China. The recovery for the world’s second-largest economy has faltered, and worries are rising about cracks in its property market. Stocks in Hong Kong have taken a particularly hard hit.

This year’s big gains for global markets may carry a downside, though: Some possible future returns may have been pulled forward, limiting the upside from here.

Europe’s economy has been flirting with recession for a while, for example, and many economists expect it to remain under pressure in 2024 because of all the hikes to interest rates that have already been pushed through.

And while central banks around the world may be set to cut interest rates later in 2024, which would relieve pressure on the economy and financial system, rates are unlikely to return to the lows that followed the 2008 financial crisis, according to researchers at investment giant Vanguard. That new normal for rates could also hem in returns for stocks and make markets more volatile.

For the next decade, Vanguard says U.S. stocks could return an annualized 4.2% to 6.2%, well below their recent run. It’s forecasting stronger potential returns from stocks abroad, both in the emerging and developed worlds.

source https://time.com/6509776/stock-market-numbers-2023-international-us-success/

I Saw the Haunting Reality of Palestinian Child Prisoners

On the afternoon of Feb. 24, 2012, Israeli soldiers arrested me during the annual march to reopen Shuhada Street, in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron. The street was once home to a popular market frequented by Palestinians until the Israeli military sealed it off to us in 1994. Palestinians have been protesting to reopen the road, which we call Apartheid Street, every year since 2010.

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What happened after my arrest that day still haunts me. 

As thousands of us marched toward Shuhada, the Israeli military began firing teargas and rubber bullets. A few of us ran for cover and found ourselves face-to-face with Israeli soldiers. One of my friends was injured after being hit by a teargas cannister, and I started tending to him. But the soldiers began harassing us, and I told them: “We do not fear you. This is Palestine. You should step back.”

The soldiers pepper sprayed me and pinned me to the ground. They slammed my head against a humvee and threw me into the back of the vehicle. About five minutes later, as they drove through the old city of Hebron, the humvee suddenly stopped, Israeli soldiers rushed out, and a boy began screaming. He was handcuffed and thrown in. He had been walking to his sister’s house for lunch when they picked him up.

When we arrived at the Israeli military outpost in the Kiryat Shmona settlement the soldiers dragged us out of the humvee. The kid, who was 14, was terrified. He pleaded with them not to pepper spray him, having seen me not be able to open my eyes. They smacked him around and told him to shut up. They then shackled my feet and had me sit on a bench outside the interrogation room, walking the boy in for questioning first. The Israeli military interrogator told him: “I can make your family’s life hell. But I’ll let you go home. You just need to confirm that the guy with you led the protest and told you to throw the stones at us.” The boy started sobbing and said: “But I don’t know this guy. I just met him when you picked me up.” The interrogator kept pressing him, at one point raising a pistol to his face.

The charge brought against this poor kid was stone throwing, based on the “testimony” of Israeli soldiers. The soldiers also accused me of assaulting them, which could have resulted in me spending up to three years in prison. They put me in solitary confinement for two days in a holding cell in the settlement. They then moved me to a heavily crowded underground holding cell in the Maskobiya prison in East Jerusalem, to await a military court hearing. 

But as a well-known activist, American citizen, and recent Stanford graduate, my case gained international attention. I was also lucky, as videos of my arrest emerged, showing that I did not assault the soldiers and that their testimony was false. 

I was released on Feb. 29 but the child was not as fortunate. I would later learn from prisoner-rights organizations Defence for Children International and Addameer that he spent three months in prison after being advised by lawyers to admit to stone-throwing so he would get out of jail sooner. Waiting for a ruling from Israel’s military courts can take months or more.

This is far from an isolated incident. Between 500-700 children are arrested a year. Israel denies mistreating prisoners but the majority of detained children are beaten, as I was that day, according to research by Save the Children. With a 95% conviction rate, according to the nonprofit Military Court Watch, lawyers and kids know it’s better to “confess” even if they are innocent, as waiting for a ruling and being stuck in limbo in an Israeli jail is hell. 

The world has turned a blind eye to this for years. Again and again and again.

Just look at recent events. While the world celebrated the hostage deal and the return of Israeli and Palestinian loved ones to their families, Israel’s revolving door of arrests continued largely unnoticed. Almost as many Palestinians have been arrested as released, according to Palestinian prisoner associations. We know from recent reports from organizations like Military Court Watch as well as graphic videos showing Israeli soldiers beating, abusing, and tormenting children, that many will face what no child ever should. 

Living in the West Bank, and after years of monitoring child arrests as part of leading Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq from 2012 to 2014, and now at global civic organization Avaaz, I see the systematic arrest of children as designed to achieve two goals. 

The first is what Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have described as pursuing an “intent to dominate” and “systematic oppression” to maintain the system of apartheid. Palestinian children in the West Bank are often snatched away in the dead of night, subjected to questioning in the absence of any parent or guardian, and languish in pretrial detention for agonizingly long periods. This brutal treatment is not just anecdotal but is reflected in chilling statistics: 72% of Palestinian children arrested in the West Bank endure prolonged custody until the conclusion of legal proceedings, a stark contrast to the 17.9% of Israeli children subjected to similar conditions, according to HRW.

The second goal is to indoctrinate these children with learned helplessness. The military experience suffocates a child’s sense of agency. They can miss a school year, end up being in classes one year younger than their friends, and often have unhealed trauma. 

These chilling facts, along with my arrest in 2012, are what inspired me to work with kids in areas with many arrests. I consulted with experts in children’s psychological health, lawyers, activists, and former prisoners to develop a curriculum for what children should do if detained. The training includes walking the children through what to expect, self-awareness and meditation tactics to calm their nerves, and legal knowledge, as well as providing community support for children who have gone through this experience. 

Yet this can only do so much. We need all violence against Palestinian children, including arbitrary detention, to end. The world has largely watched in horror as Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has left at least 18,000 people dead, over 7,000 of whom are children, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

The victimization of Palestinian children is profound enough that one Hebrew University law professor has coined a word for it: “Unchilding.” The international community must act to stop the suffering of children, whether they are under bombardment, siege, or in detention.

All children deserve dignity, protection, and a life free from fear. Palestinian children should be no exception.

source https://time.com/6366734/palestinian-child-detainees/

Teens Are Taking More Reliable Birth Control

The teen birth rate in the U.S. has been declining consistently for more than 30 years, despite the fact that the number of teenage girls having sex has not changed since at least 2002. A new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests a key driver of this trend: a dramatic increase in teenage girls using long-lasting and reliable forms of contraception.

The percentage of girls ages 15 to 19 using long-acting reversible contraception, which includes intrauterine devices (IUDs) and contraceptive implants, reached a reported high of 19% from 2015-2019. That’s more than three times the rate at which they were used from 2011-2015. 

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Long-lasting birth control can be up to 20 times as effective as birth control pills and other hormonal contraceptive options like the NuvaRing over time, and they can offer years of protection. “Public health focuses on these because they’re easy to use,” says Joyce Amba, a social scientist at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics and co-author of the report. “They don’t require a daily regimen like a pill and they’re very effective.” But for many teens, and even women, they can be the most difficult methods of birth control to access. Insurance coverage for teens looking to have an IUD or implant placed can be spotty, and the placement procedures mean that physician visits are more intensive than the consultations other methods require and more difficult to afford for teens without parental consent.

Read More: Why Everyone Is Having Bad Sex (Especially Young People)

Despite the barriers, the increasing popularity of these methods suggests that access to and knowledge about them are improving. One likely reason why is the growing public support for comprehensive sex education over time, which—despite being in danger in 2023—grew more common in schools throughout the 2010s. Overall, teens use more varied methods of contraception than they did when the CDC established its current survey methods in 2002, including emergency contraception, which went from being used by 8% of girls ages 15 to 19 in 2011-2015 to 22% of girls in 2015-2019. A similar increase occurred in the share of teens who reported using more than one contraceptive method, which reflects that teens may be more aware of their choices than they used to be.

The data in the new report only go up to 2019, and Amba says that it’s still too early to know how trends may have continued or changed beyond that year—including how they may have been affected by the political battles over contraceptive access that have begun since the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion in 2022. According to separate smaller surveys and information shared by clinics including Planned Parenthood, the Supreme Court’s decision led to a significant increase in teens and women of all ages seeking long-lasting contraceptive methods. “The data in the future will be very interesting,” Amba says. 

source https://time.com/6468975/teens-long-acting-contraceptives/

WeightWatchers Is Now Prescribing Weight Loss Drugs

WeightWatchers has been through a lot of changes recently. In 2018 the popular weight loss program changed its name to WW with an updated mission: “Wellness That Works.” For the first time, that mission includes medications.

Last spring, the company acquired Sequence, a digital health company, which allowed members to get prescriptions for weight loss drugs. Now the 60-year old company is launching WeightWatchers Clinic, which will give them access to telehealth weight loss management and doctors who can prescribe weight loss medications like semaglutide (Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Zepbound).

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It’s a significant shift for a company that has long focused on behavior-based strategies: making changes in diet and exercise, utilizing a “points” system for tallying the caloric and nutritional value of different foods, and relying on a community of support through coaches and other members that meet regularly to keep dieters motivated.

“We are no longer a consumer retail brand; we are a digital health company,” says WeightWatchers CEO Sima Sistani. “We are trying to lead the conversation around obesity and get people thinking about not just lifestyle interventions, but also clinical solutions like medications.”

“If we get it right, it could be the end of diet culture,” Sistani says, “and diet can go back to literally meaning habitual nourishment.”

WeightWatchers won’t be generating revenue from prescribing weight loss medications, but it will charge members an additional $99 a month on top of the monthly fee to access the clinic that givens them access to the drugs. The company is also beefing up the programs it offers on its app and is launching a program specifically for people taking these medications.

“Some people see it as a left turn,” says Gary Foster, chief scientific officer at WeightWatchers. “But we’re evolving as the science evolves.”

Foster says the program is needed since the medications introduce a completely different set of challenges for people taking them. Most people trying to lose weight focus on managing the constant food cues that surround them, as well as learning about portion control and how to quell emotional triggers for eating. But because the new drugs drastically reduce appetite, people taking them have the opposite problem: remembering to eat, and specifically making sure they consume enough protein to maintain muscle mass.

WeightWatchers’ evolving stance on weight loss drugs

Jean Nidtech founded WeightWatchers in 1963 when she realized that having a group of friends who were trying to lose weight together would provide critical psychological support and motivation. The support-group-style meetings, in which members shared their challenges and successes and received encouragement throughout their journey, remain a mainstay of the program.

Even when various weight loss drugs became available over the years, WeightWatchers has never included them in its program. “There wasn’t much consumer interest in those medications, since they were associated with 7%, 8%, and 9% weight loss,” says Foster.

The program focused instead on more scientifically supported strategies, such as addressing sleep and stress and teaching cognitive behavioral skills such as recognizing eating triggers and findings ways to manage cravings.

But then a new generation of drugs called GLP-1 agonists came along, achieving mainstream popularity over the past few years. What makes these drugs different is how effectively they suppress hunger signals and control the activity of the stomach and digestive system. Semaglutide (sold under the brand names Ozempic and Wegovy) is part of this group, while tirzepatide (brand names: Mounjaro and Zepbound) targets both GLP-1 and another hormone, GIP. Both are more effective than any previous weight loss drugs. Studies show that people taking semaglutide can lose around 15% of their body weight, and people taking tirzepatide can lose more than 20%.

With strong scientific studies supporting how well they worked, Foster says adding them to WeightWatcher’s options just made sense. “We are combining the best of biology with the best of behavior change,” he says. “It’s a false dichotomy to say it’s either behavior or medications. Medications will drive weight loss, but behavior change has never been more important because no medication will teach you how to eat healthier, make sure you’re getting enough protein, and ensure you have enough muscle mass through strength training.”

Inside WeightWatchers’ new GLP-1 program

The new GLP-1 support program, which will be included in the company’s $23 monthly membership, is for people who want to address the physical and psychological changes that come with taking these drugs.

Donna Deutsch, a longtime WeightWatchers member, decided she wanted to try one of the newly approved drugs for weight loss earlier this year. Most were approved for treating diabetes at the time, but could be prescribed off label to help with weight loss. She didn’t feel comfortable asking her primary care physician about them—thinking “I would be automatically denied if I asked her about these drugs,” she says—so she turned to the telehealth company, Sequence, after seeing a commercial about its services. After a virtual consultation in which the doctor discussed her weight and medical history, the physician prescribed tirzepatide (Mounjaro).

Deutsch understood that the prescription was off label, and because she does not have diabetes, she had to pay for the injections out of pocket.

Still, she says it was worth it. She quickly started losing weight because she no longer felt hungry. “The food noise disappeared: the noise coming from my kitchen, telling me to come back and eat chocolate or ice cream,” she says. She’s been taking Mounjaro for nearly a year and no longer snacks throughout the day. Within a few months, she had lost 30 to 35 pounds.

Around that time, Deutsch was invited to participate in a pilot program WeightWatchers was launching for members who were taking one of the newer weight loss medications—what is now the GLP-1 program. Deutsch joined, eager to better understand how her body was responding to the medication, and wanting to sustain the early success she was having. The supportive community she had previously found in WeightWatchers, along with resources like recipes and access to a dietitian, were a huge help. “It became a lot easier,” she says, to grocery shop and know what to cook to meet the specific nutritional needs she has while taking the medication, such as getting enough protein and drinking plenty of water.

Her current diet is much different from the one she used to adhere to when doing WeightWatchers before Mounjaro. That’s because her dietary needs are, too. “I’m learning about different sources of protein and combinations of foods I can incorporate into my daily diet,” she says. “I was not a big egg-eater, but now I do a lot of egg salads and deviled eggs, and I always have hard boiled eggs in the refrigerator. And my big craving now is for blueberries.”

WeightWatchers’ new clinic

Members can now get the drugs directly from the WeightWatchers telehealth clinic: a reworked version of Sequence’s telehealth services. Those who are interested in prescriptions for Wegovy, Zepbound, or other weight loss medications can take an intake survey and then discuss with a health care provider whether they qualify for one of the new drugs according to criteria set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration: namely, that they have a BMI over 30 or a BMI of 27 or above plus at least one obesity-related condition, such as high blood pressure or elevated cholesterol. Members can upload parts of their electronic health records to help providers determine if they could benefit from taking a weight loss drug, and if so, which one. Members also must upload pictures of themselves, with identification, to validate their weight and identity to ensure that they are getting the appropriate drug.

Clinic users will also benefit from another perk: WeightWatchers will help them obtain any pre-authorization clearance required by their insurers if the drug is covered by their plan or by their employer. Playing an active role in advocating for reimbursement is important, says WeightWatchers CEO Sistani. “If employers and insurers start covering these drugs, that will be an opportunity to really shift global health outcomes,” she says.

Because Wegovy and Zepbound can cause thyroid issues and digestion problems, members receiving these drugs through the clinic will also get monthly check ins with their clinic health care provider to monitor their weight loss and any side effects. Dr. Spencer Nadolsky, medical director at WeightWatchers, says half of the doctors staffing the clinic are board certified in obesity medicine, and all of them need to complete a training program to ensure they are up to date on using the newer weight loss medications.

Not everyone who wants the new drugs will necessarily be right for them, or, even if they qualify, be able to get access to them. That’s especially true of Wegovy, which is in short supply after its manufacturer, Novo Nordisk, decided to limit starter doses to ensure that anyone who starts taking the drug can continue to get it. That’s why some members using the clinic can also get older weight loss drugs at no cost if their clinic doctors believes these medications can help until supply increases.

Deutsch is currently taking the highest dose of Mounjaro and hopes to eventually move to maintenance treatment, which could mean tapering down the dose or even stopping the injections. “I’m hoping I will continue to be successful in keeping weight off once I’m off Mounjaro,” she says. “But if not, I know I still have WeightWatchers, and I can still go back to following the system that made WeightWatchers so successful. I know I won’t be alone.”

source https://time.com/6464785/weightwatchers-prescribing-weight-loss-drugs/