EDMONTON, Alberta – I am dating myself, but I remember when American communities united to achieve public health goals. Polio eradication, for example. Doctors, schools, public health clinics and service groups like the Red Cross all worked together to achieve the goal.

That sense of community animates Edmonton's Weight Wise program. For the last two years, Capital Health, the regional health authority here, has been bringing together businesses, service groups, physicians and many others to combat an epidemic well-known to Texans.

"The train coming at us is obesity," said Sheila Weatherill, president and chief executive of Capital Health. "It is a big issue, but we have a lot of tools to use."

Capital Health is a government health provider. That may have a lot to do with the tools available to Ms. Weatherill.

One example is the clinics where dietitians, psychologists, internists, surgeons and family doctors work together to address the aspects of obesity.

Half the 3.3 million Albertans are overweight or obese. (Two-thirds of Texans are in one of those categories.) Obesity in Alberta ballooned from 14 percent of the population in 1985 to 29 percent in 1997. In 1995, 3.8 percent of Albertans had diabetes. In 2005, it was 5.3 percent.

Obesity is a direct highway to type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and joint problems. It contributes to higher rates of colon cancer, infertility, heart disease and respiratory ailments.

Businesses work with Capital Health to heighten obesity awareness, promote programs such as Weight Watchers, and provide health savings accounts that employees can use to pay for fitness club memberships.

Capital Health focuses on obesity in its medical research at the University of Alberta medical school, and in surgery at its bariatric surgery clinic. (Such surgery has been covered by insurance since 1982.) The group recently hired one of the top obesity experts in Canada to run its Weight Wise and university research programs.

Daniel Birch teaches at the University of Alberta and does laproscopic (minimally invasive) surgery on morbidly obese patients at Capital Health's bariatric clinic.

This is not liposuction or cosmetic surgery. Gastric bypass and gastric banding surgeries curb both appetite and food absorption by reducing the size of a patient's stomach and digestive tract.

"I have the bias of a surgeon, but we're kind of challenged to bring other kinds of treatment to obesity," Dr. Birch said. "It is long-lasting. And our patients are virtually cured of type 2 diabetes."

By using laproscopic tools (soda-straw size cameras and surgical tools), patients undergoing adjustable gastric band surgery are out within a day. Gastric bypass patients are out in two days.

Dr. Birch wasn't surprised by two major studies reported last week from Sweden and the United States that showed bariatric surgery patients lived longer, more productive lives.

Studies have shown it doesn't work to just admonish obese people to eat right and exercise, he said. Drug therapies and behavior modification are also failing the morbidly obese, he said.

"The easiest way to deal with this epidemic is to stop thinking of it as obesity and start thinking of it as a chronic [or long-lasting or recurring] disease."

Capital Health urges diabetics to get eye exams every year. If they don't come in, a letter is sent reminding them of the prudence of such exams. If that doesn't work, they get a phone call asking why they haven't come.

And family doctors are starting to use electronic medical records to track people whose weight suggests they are likely to develop diabetes.

"When we have that, we can be pro-active to do something about it," said Ms. Weatherill. "U.S. programs [which for the most part do not use electronic medical records] say they can't do it. But we can pro-actively do it, so in a few years we won't be cutting off the legs of those people or getting them on dialysis machines."

Ms. Weatherill wants more attention focused on school nutrition, buildings that offer exercise opportunities, community bike and jogging trails, and government directives that militate against poor eating habits the way they've militated against smoking.

An old-school view of this would have doctors telling patients to eat right and exercise. Period. In Edmonton, employers already struggling to fill jobs want dependable workers who aren't out ill because of obesity-related problems. They're lining up with Ms. Weatherill.