Flagship initiative · in development

The Conversation.

Personalized CPD for obesity management in primary care. HOPE's flagship program is currently in development, with funding being raised through unrestricted multi-funder grants.

Why this program exists

The barrier is the consultation, not the textbook.

A decade of survey work, anchored by the Canadian ACTION Study and reinforced by parallel data across markets, has documented the same pattern: physicians believe the weight conversation happens more often than patients experience it, obesity goes uncoded, treatment goes uninitiated, and follow-up rarely happens.

The barrier is not what either party knows. It is what happens, and fails to happen, between them in the room. Nowhere else in medicine does an encounter arrive so heavily loaded with stigma, internalized bias, learned helplessness, and the residue of decades of commercial misinformation.

The Conversation treats one question as the unit of success: did the patient leave the room understanding that obesity is a real disease, that treatment exists, and that the relationship with their physician will hold across the long arc of chronic care.

How it works

The program comes to the physician, not the other way around.

A QR code or a colleague's link starts an SMS thread, and that thread is the program: the intake, twelve months of modules, mid-consult clinical questions, and a magic-link door into the full multimedia platform whenever she wants to go deeper. There's no app to download and no password to remember.

01 · DISCOVERY The program comes to her QR code at a conference Scan with phone camera Link from a colleague Text, email, or DM SMS arrives within seconds No app to download. No password to remember. She replies to enroll. 02 · INTAKE Four short questions, by text Practice setting Solo, group, clinic Confidence today In obesity care Learning preferences Audio, visual, reading Gaps to close What she wants most Personalized 12-month learning plan Same clinical content for everyone, tailored format & pace 03 · THE SMS THREAD IS THE PROGRAM Modules arrive on a schedule, in her chosen format AI podcast 15 min, for the commute Personalized voice Animated explainer 3 min, between patients Quick visual Deep-dive article When she has time Long-form reading Calendar invites Module drops + cases Spaced repetition Mid-consult Q&A Curriculum-grounded Clinician escalation 04 · GO DEEPER Any link opens the full platform: magic link, no login Patient simulations AI-supported Video vignettes Short clinical scenes Deep-dive articles Reference depth In-office tools Use in the room EMR templates Agnostic, printable Same clinical content for every learner. Format, pace, and entry point are not.

The clinical content every learner receives is the same. The format, pace, and entry point are not.

Curriculum

The encounter comes first; the textbook supports it.

Most obesity CPD opens with pathophysiology and assumes the encounter will take care of itself. The Conversation inverts that order. The curriculum opens with the encounter: the specific conversations every clinician needs to deliver, and the Conversation Method (ask, listen, summarize, invite/inform) used to deliver them.

Conversation modules

Each module's learning objective takes the same form: the clinician learns to lead a conversation that results in the patient considering a specific idea and feeling that the interaction was collaborative and motivating.

  • Countering internalized weight bias: obesity as disease, not personal failure; treatment exists; patient is not alone.
  • Wanting / appetite: appetite dysregulation as the central symptom of obesity and the primary target of obesity medications.
  • Weight-loss expectations: the brain's defence against fat loss, and what the medications can and cannot change.
  • Food noise: wanting paired with automatic thoughts that give logic and permission to overeating.
  • Setbacks: the cognitive bias pattern that follows perceived failure, and how to interrupt the demotivation spiral.
  • Values clarification: anchoring long-term motivation to what the patient actually cares about.
  • Medical nutrition therapy: caloric intake, protein, self-monitoring, and minimizing the adverse effects of obesity medications.
  • Exercise: what exercise does for weight management, what it doesn't, and the role of resistance training in lean-mass preservation.

Foundation modules

The foundation modules run alongside the conversations they support and are drawn from the 2020 Canadian Adult Obesity Clinical Practice Guidelines.

  • Comprehensive obesity assessment: staging with EOSS, iatrogenic and secondary contributors, targeted workup.
  • Pharmacotherapy: candidate selection, chronic-disease framing, initiation and titration across mechanism classes, side-effect management, monitoring, stopping rules.
  • Bariatric surgery: referral criteria, regional access, post-operative primary care, long-term follow-up.
  • Integrated comorbidity management: type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, MASH, CKD, OSA, reproductive health, mental health.

Delivery formats

Same curriculum. Different door in. Different rhythm.

Each module is delivered in multiple formats so the same learning objectives can be met by physicians with different schedules, attention budgets, and learning preferences. Format selection is the learner's; the platform recommends a default sequence based on intake assessment.

Podcasts (15–20 minutes)

Physician-hosted, weaving clinical evidence with patient cases, designed for commutes.

Audio micro-lessons (2–5 minutes)

Single-concept clinical pearls for between-patient moments.

Animated explainers (3–5 minutes)

Visual storytelling for complex pathophysiology.

Deep-dive articles

Full clinical reviews with citations, trial data, and class-level prescribing guidance.

Interactive patient simulations

AI-supported virtual consultations with structured feedback, from raising the topic of weight through treatment selection and follow-up.

In-office patient tools

Diagrams, conversation cards, and visual aids physicians can pull up or print during consultations.

How it's funded

Unrestricted, independent by design.

The Conversation is funded through an unrestricted, multi-funder pooled grant. The model has four firewalls built into it.

Talk to us about funding

Status

Where we are now.

The Conversation is currently in development and seeking funding partners. Curriculum design and instructional architecture are complete; SMS infrastructure and content production begin on grant close.

Become a funding partner More on partnership →