Welcome & Introduction: Pediatric Obesity 2017

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. Welcome to the latest evidence and trends in pediatric obesity. I am Mark Wolco. I'm the surgeon in chief at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, and I'm part of our Strong for Life program as the bariatric surgeon. This is the 5th year we've been doing this pediatric obesity global cast, and I think it's gonna be our best one yet. We have an all-star faculty who are going to cover some great topics. I'm joined by my co-host Stephanie Walsh. Stephanie is an associate professor of surgery and pediatrics and the medical director of wellness in our Strong for Life clinic at Children's, and I'm also joined by our virtual host Doctor Chris Bowling. I'm gonna put Chris, uh, I guess Chris is up there on the screen. Uh, Chris is a private practice pediatrician in Kentucky and the chair of the, uh, section on obesity of the American Academy of Pediatrics. We also, like I said, have an all-star faculty. I'm gonna go through a big long list. I'm gonna name them all just to give them some recognition, and you're gonna get to hear from all these experts in the field. Today we have Claudia Fox from Minneapolis, Chris Wood from San Diego, Kelly Brownwell from Duke, Mark Maowski at Nationwide Children's, Tom Inge, who is now at the Children's Hospital of Colorado, uh, Doctor Sheathel Reddy, uh, Kristen Fuller, and Jody Demonda, who are from our program at Children's Health Care of Atlanta, uh, Doctor John Rausch at Columbia in New York, Victoria Rogers from the Barbara Bush Children's Hospital in Maine. Doctor Allie Goodman at the CDC in Atlanta, Mark Hamer from Children's Hospital at Colorado along with Doctor Inge, and Alan Brown from Falmouth, Maine, thank you all for joining us today, and we really appreciate all the time and effort that you've put into this. A few housekeeping things, so. Like I said, this is our 5th 1 that we've done this, and pretty much every time there's a little glitch here or there, something happens. We made it through snowstorms, power outages, and everything else. So if you get a blank screen, don't panic, we'll get it fixed. If you find that you're getting glitchy or that you lose video, lose audio, first start with refreshing your browser. And if that doesn't work, you may even need to try restarting your computer. If it's a problem on our end, we'll try to get that information out to you, but just be patient, we always come back on and it always seems to work out just fine. A couple of other things, uh, you'll be able to download all the presentations from the file section, uh, and there's also an exhibit hall where you can see some videos and stuff, some materials that we have from Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. Uh, don't forget to answer the polls that come up and there's a little chat window. Please feel free to, please feel free to, uh. I forgot to, I thought I silenced my phone, OK. Threw me off there for a minute. Feel free to ask questions in the chat, and we're gonna be monitoring that and we'll be asking those live on the screen. Uh, I also want to say that this global cast is sponsored by Children's Healthcare of Atlanta and an unrestricted educational grant from Hilliard Healthcare for which we're very grateful. And now I'm going to turn the, uh, microphone over to my co-host, Dr. Stephanie Walsh to introduce our first guest. Yes, I, I'm super excited. This is our 5th 1, and I think this lineup is spectacular. So I'm really excited to hear from all our presenters.