Biography

Dr. Butsch is an obesity medicine physician and the Director of Obesity Medicine in the Bariatric and Metabolic Institute (BMI) at the Cleveland Clinic since 2018. He was one of first two physicians in the United States to complete subspecialty fellowship in obesity medicine in 2008 at Harvard Medical School (HMS)/Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and remained on faculty from 2008-2017. He completed a clinical nutrition fellowship at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2007 and is a certified physician nutrition specialist. He is a diplomat of the American Board of Obesity Medicine and a Fellow of The Obesity Society.

Dr. Butsch‘s clinical interests focus on the medical management of obesity, specifically the use of combination pharmacotherapy in patients with severe obesity, bariatric surgical patients and special populations with severe obesity. He co-wrote the obesity care path for the Cleveland Clinic and directs medical obesity programs at the BMI. He heads clinical research in obesity medicine at the BMI, including clinical trials in obesity pharmacotherapy, and collaborates in clinical research studies on the effects of bariatric surgery.

His academic interests focus on obesity and nutrition education. He was the Curtis Prout Fellow in medical education at HMS in 2010, At Harvard, he was the course director of Clinical Nutrition from 2009-2016 and director of Education in the Division of Nutrition at HMS from 2014-2018. Dr. Butsch is a national leader in obesity education and has been instrumental in shaping the current state of education and training. With his initial idea to create core obesity competencies in the United States, his efforts have helped formalize and expand obesity education in the United States and abroad. He has created/co-created numerous national and international obesity education programs including the Cleveland Clinic’s obesity medicine fellowship, HMS’s Obesity Medicine Board Review course, the World Federation’s SCOPE Leadership Programme preceptorship for international physicians in obesity medicine and Cleveland Clinic’s CME training courses in obesity medicine in Chile.

He is an author of numerous chapters and manuscripts and lectures nationally and internationally on the management of obesity.