The Healthy Weight Literacy Foundation publishes content that covers medications, metabolic conditions, and other topics where accuracy has real consequences for readers. This page describes how that content is reviewed before publication and how it is kept current after publication.
What Gets Reviewed
Not all content carries the same medical risk. We categorize our articles and apply review requirements accordingly.
Clinical content — articles covering specific medications, dosing, side effects, contraindications, or clinical outcomes — receives the most rigorous review process. This includes all GLP-1 medication articles, compound pharmacy guidance, metabolic health content, and any article making specific claims about medication efficacy or safety.
Patient guidance content — articles covering what to ask a provider, how to interpret a medical situation, or how to find reliable health information — is reviewed for accuracy, appropriate hedging, and absence of content that could be read as individual medical advice.
Educational and consumer content — articles covering obesity as a chronic disease, nutrition basics, exercise guidance, or scam awareness — is reviewed for factual accuracy and for the absence of harmful claims or unsafe implications.
What Review Covers
Medical review for clinical content evaluates:
Claim accuracy — Are the specific claims made in the article consistent with current published evidence? Are trial results cited correctly? Are mechanism descriptions accurate?
Source quality — Are claims attributed to appropriate sources? Peer-reviewed trials, FDA prescribing information, major health authority publications, and established clinical guidelines are acceptable sources. Manufacturer press releases, non-peer-reviewed commentary, and secondary aggregators are not used as primary sources.
Hedging appropriateness — Does the article correctly represent the certainty of the evidence? Claims that are well-established are presented as such. Claims that are preliminary, debated, or population-specific are qualified accordingly.
Safety and harm risk — Could any passage be misread in a way that leads a patient to delay seeking care, make changes to their medication incorrectly, or make a clinical decision without appropriate provider guidance? Review identifies and corrects these passages.
Contraindication completeness — For articles covering medications, review confirms that relevant contraindications, precautions, and populations for whom the medication is not appropriate are addressed.
Disclaimer placement — Are medical disclaimers present at appropriate points in the article? Clinical content requires a disclaimer at both the top and bottom of the article at minimum.
What Review Does Not Cover
Medical review is an accuracy and safety process. Our review process confirms that articles are factually sound and do not contain harmful guidance. It does not constitute a recommendation of any specific medication or approach for any specific person.
Nothing published on WeightLiteracy.org is medical advice. Our content is educational. Readers should always work with a qualified healthcare provider for decisions about their own health.
Review Frequency
Published articles are assigned a review schedule based on how quickly the relevant medical landscape is likely to change. Articles covering FDA-approved medications and clinical trial evidence are reviewed on an annual basis at minimum. Articles covering areas of active regulatory or policy change — including drug access and compound pharmacy rules — are reviewed more frequently.
When a significant development occurs in a covered area — a new FDA warning, a major trial publication, a guideline update — relevant articles are flagged for out-of-cycle review regardless of their scheduled date.
The review date shown in each article footer reflects the most recent medical review, distinct from any editorial updates made to the article for clarity or accuracy.
Our Standard
Our standard for publication is that a patient or caregiver who reads and follows the guidance in an article should be better prepared for a conversation with their healthcare provider — not harmed, misled, or left with false certainty about a complex clinical situation.
When an article cannot meet that standard, it is revised or not published.