Dr. Rometo’s academic interests focus on improving the understanding and treatment of obesity and related metabolic disorders with an emphasis on generating effective programs for the “real world” clinical setting. Dr. Rometo is currently the Clinical Leader for the Medically-Supervised Weight Loss and Obesity Medicine Program in the Division of Endocrinology. In this role, he has developed several innovative clinical programs focused on promoting health and preventing disease in patients with overweight or obesity.

Among these programs are a program focused in reversing diabetes and other metabolic complications of obesity (i.e. the Disease Remission in Obesity Program or “DROP”), a medically-supervised very low calorie diet program, (i.e. Opti-fast Program), and a post-bariatric surgery diabetes and weight management program. To determine the overall effectiveness of these programs, Dr. Rometo assesses clinical outcomes, quality measures, cost effectiveness, and patient satisfaction of these clinical care models for metabolic and disease and weight management. In addition to these scholarly activities, Dr. Rometo is a major driver of training in the field of obesity medicine at the UPMC.

Dr. Rometo's clinical interests include the treatment of type 2 diabetes and other endocrine disorders that are caused or worsened by obesity, including PCOS and infertility. He is interested in the development of protocols that use bariatric surgery, obesity medications, and very low calorie diets with meal replacements to achieve significant and long-lasting weight loss for comorbidity improvement/remission and fertility.