Adolescent Healthy Weight Program

Helping your child reach and maintain a healthy weight is just as important to their health as ensuring they have the right vaccinations and are hitting their developmental milestones. But achieving this can be challenging, especially for young people who have experienced significant weight gain that is affecting their physical and mental health. The care team at the Adolescent Healthy Weight Program, part of Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at NYU Langone, provides compassionate, age-appropriate, and medically proven weight loss solutions for teenagers. 

Addressing weight issues early in life can have a long-term positive impact on health. Teens with obesity are at greater risk of asthma, diabetes, sleep apnea, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, liver disease, and bone and joint problems, both in adolescence and in adulthood. Young people with obesity may also experience low self-esteem, anxiety, or depression, and withdraw from friends, school, and other activities.

Our goal is to partner with your child in their journey toward a healthy weight. Our team includes a pediatric endocrinologist, pediatric bariatric surgeon, child and adolescent psychologist, nutritionist, and social worker. We help your child understand the impact their weight has on their health and day-to-day life; develop manageable, achievable weight loss goals; and provide a plan for achieving them.

We provide treatment for people age 13 and older who have a body mass index (BMI) of 35 or higher. During your child’s first visit, we discuss how obesity has impacted their lives, what efforts they’ve made to lose weight, and their goals for treatment. We order blood tests to determine their risk of conditions related to obesity, such as metabolic syndrome and diabetes. We also learn about their family history of obesity, and provide testing for genetic obesity syndromes if appropriate. When necessary, we refer your child for additional care from our pediatric pulmonologists, sleep medicine experts, and other specialists.

Our Treatment Options

To help your child lose weight, we start with diet and lifestyle counseling and nutrition education. This includes strategies the entire family can use to limit unhealthy foods and incorporate more physical activity into their daily routines. Weight loss medication that reduces appetite and curbs overeating or that limits caloric absorption from foods may also be prescribed.

When these dietary and lifestyle interventions are not enough to achieve a healthy weight, we may recommend weight loss surgery for teens, also called adolescent bariatric surgery.