Catherine Welford Varney, DO
Family Medicine
Additional Locations
Bio & Overview
Catherine Varney, DO, is a dual board-certified physician in Family Medicine and Obesity Medicine and serves as an associate professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. She has served as the inaugural Obesity Medicine Director since 2021 for UVA Health.
Dr. Varney plays an integral role in shaping obesity medicine education locally at UVA through medical student and resident curriculum development and nationally for the American Academy of Family Physicians, American College of Osteopathic Family Physicians, and the Obesity Medicine Association. In recognition of her contributions to the advancement of obesity medicine education in academic medicine, she was awarded the 2022 Steelman-Seim Educator Award for Excellence in Academics by the Obesity Medicine Association.
She is actively engaged in clinical research focused on innovative approaches to obesity and metabolic disease. She has served as both principal and co-investigator on multiple grant-funded research studies. Her research bridges clinical practice and implementation science, with an emphasis on scalable, evidence-based interventions.
Academic Information
- Department
- Family Medicine
- Academic Role
- Associate Professor
- Division
- Family Medicine
- Research Interests
- Obesity management in primary care and post-bariatric surgery, pharmacological interventions for obesity, relationship between obesity and cancer.
- Gender
- Female
- Languages
- English
- Age Groups Seen
- Infants (0-2)
Children (2-12)
Adolescents (12-21)
Adults (21-65)
Older Adults (65+)
- Primary Education
- Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine - Virginia Campus
- Residency
- Intermountain McKay-Dee Hospital Center
- Certification
- American Board of Family Medicine (Family Medicine)
- Additional Specialties
- Obesity Medicine
Highlights
Meet Catherine Varney, DO
My name is Dr. Kate Varney. I am the Obesity Medicine Director for UVA Health, and I see patients from all over the spectrum. So I see from cradle to grave, so family medicine, preventative care. So when you go see your primary care physician, I do general medicine, but then I also have extra training in obesity medicine, and I have a separate clinic in which I treat patients just for obesity. My passion in medicine is treating obesity, and this is based on personal experience. I had questions that couldn't be answered for me by my primary care physician, so I said, I want to learn more. And so once I learned those things, I wanted to spread that, and I thought it was such an important thing for a primary care physician to know how to treat obesity. So many of the things that I'm treating in, and trying to prevent in primary care, colon cancer, diabetes, hypertension, if we treat the obesity, those things get better too. So when patients come to me at Obesity Medicine Clinic, we take a thorough history of what have you done before? What works for you, what doesn't work for you? Because I tell my patients that a hundred percent of the time, you're not going to stay on a diet that you don't like, or don't enjoy, or doesn't fit into your life. People should consider UVA health for treatment of obesity because we were the first center in Virginia that is tri-accredited, meaning that we are triple accredited for treatment with bariatric surgery for both adult and adolescent population, and then also obesity medicine. So we were the first in that. Here at UVA Health, you're getting the best treatment in the state.
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