Celebrating Canadian Excellence: A Conversation with Dr. Michael Vallis
Scale Up Your Practice by Obesity CanadaShow Notes
🎙️ This episode is sponsored. Obesity Canada received an unrestricted educational grant from Eli Lilly Canada to produce this episode. 🎙️
In the second instalment of our Celebrating Canadian Excellence series, we’re joined by globally recognized psychologist and obesity expert Dr. Michael Vallis.
With deep expertise in behavioural medicine, Dr. Vallis shares his journey into the world of obesity care, what drives him personally and professionally, and what healthcare professionals need to understand to better support people living with obesity.
🎯 In this episode, Dr. Vallis discusses: What behavioural change really means in clinical practice
Why empathy and relationship-building are the foundation of good care
The one thing every clinician should remember when treating obesity
Whether you're a physician, allied health professional, or student, this episode offers insights that will help you approach obesity care with more compassion, nuance, and clarity.
Additional Resources Mentioned: Free Obesity Canada course with Dr. Vallis: Introduction to Behaviour Change Counselling for Obesity: https://utm.guru/uie2p
Canadian Adult Obesity Clinical Practice Guideline: https://utm.guru/uie2l
Want to hear more from Dr. Vallis? He’ll be joining us again on April 10 for a deeper dive into his work with obesity management. Make sure you’re subscribed to be notified when we release new episodes!
Send us your questions or topic requests: [email protected]
Enjoying the podcast? Here’s how you can support us: ✅ Share the episode with a colleague ✅ Subscribe on your favourite podcast platform ✅ Leave a review—it helps more people find us
Thanks for listening—and stay tuned as we continue to scale up your practice.
Scale Up Your Practice is created by Obesity Canada. Learn more at obesitycanada.ca
More from Scale Up Your Practice by Obesity Canada
🎙️This episode is sponsored by an unrestricted education grant from Eli Lilly Canada
What happens when healthcare professionals know what evidence-informed obesity care should look like, but the system makes that care difficult to deliver? Ian Patton and Jennifer Brown join us on the podcast to unpack findings from The State of Obesity Care in Canada report and connect them to what clinicians and patients experience every day: limited referral pathways, uneven treatment coverage, gaps in psychological support, inconsistent access to metabolic bariatric surgery and the effects of weight bias at the system level.
🎙️This episode is sponsored by an unrestricted education grant from Eli Lilly Canada
🎙️This episode was made possible through the partnership between Obesity Canada and Boehringer Ingelheim in support of the Global Patient Charter Framework initiative.
🎙️This episode is sponsored by an unrestricted education grant from Eli Lilly Canada Pregnancy care should feel safe, respectful and supportive for every patient. But for pregnant patients living with obesity, clinical spaces can sometimes create anxiety before care even begins, from waiting room seating and equipment that do not fit, to conversations about weight, pregnancy risk and health that can feel stigmatizing. In this episode of Scale Up Your Practice, Dr. Cynthia Maxwell joins Dr. Roshan Abraham and Michelle McMillan to discuss how healthcare professionals can create safer, more equitable pregnancy care for patients living with obesity. She shares practical strategies to reduce weight bias in maternal care, communicate pregnancy risks without blame, ask permission around weighing, and build healthcare environments where patients feel physically and psychologically safe.