Published by Global Banking and Finance Review
Posted on September 18, 2025
3 min readLast updated: January 21, 2026
Novo Nordisk disbands its U.S. obesity education team as part of cost-cutting measures amid global layoffs, aiming to regain market share from Eli Lilly.
By Maggie Fick
VIENNA (Reuters) -Wegovy maker Novo Nordisk has cut a U.S. sales team focused on obesity and diabetes education for healthcare providers, according to two sources close to the company and LinkedIn posts reviewed by Reuters, an early sign of the drugmaker's push to cut costs and regain ground on rival Eli Lilly.
The team, known internally as cardiometabolic educators, sat within Novo Nordisk's commercial division and included several hundred staff, sources said. The team was told last week that their roles would be terminated, they said.
The specific layoffs, previously unreported, give the first signal of how the Danish drugmaker's new CEO Maziar Mike Doustdar is scaling back operations after announcing broader restructuring that will include 9,000 job cuts globally.
A Novo spokesperson said the company would not detail the locations or business divisions where jobs were being eliminated.
"This process takes time, and our highest priority is to support our employees," the spokesperson said.
The restructuring has gone down well initially with investors, helping boost the firm's shares after it lost its dominance in the U.S. market for weight loss drugs to Eli Lilly. Novo has lost over $400 billion in market capitalization since the middle of last year, following profit warnings and management change.
The two sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the specific layoffs have not been made public, said that the team was disbanded last Friday, two days after Novo announced the wider cuts without detailing which roles would be affected. They were told they should cease work this month but that they would be paid until the end of the year.
"Lilly does not have an education team and Novo has decided it doesn't need one," said one of the sources.
Reuters identified eight Novo employees on LinkedIn with the current job title of "cardiometabolic educator" who posted publicly that they are looking for new work or have been let go. Reuters attempted to contact all of them but none of them responded.
One referred to a "national displacement affecting the Novo Nordisk cardiometabolic educator department" and another wrote that "the entire U.S. cardiometabolic education team was eliminated".
Big pharmaceutical companies often provide so-called "disease state education" to raise awareness of medical conditions ahead of a product launch or label expansion.
(Reporting by Maggie Fick; Editing by Susan Fenton and Nia Williams)
Novo Nordisk has cut its U.S. sales team focused on obesity and diabetes education, known as cardiometabolic educators, as part of broader layoffs.
The restructuring has been positively received by investors, leading to a boost in the company's shares after it lost market dominance in weight loss drugs.
The layoffs were part of a scaling back of operations announced by Novo Nordisk's new CEO, Maziar Mike Doustdar, as the company seeks to streamline its business.
Sources indicated that the cardiometabolic education team was disbanded and that Novo Nordisk decided it no longer needed an education team, unlike its competitor Eli Lilly.
Big pharmaceutical companies often provide disease state education to raise awareness of medical conditions, which is crucial ahead of product launches or label expansions.
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