Posts Tagged ‘weight bias’

It is hard not to think we are seeing a subtle shift in prevailing bias about obesity. Almost a decade ago, Health Affairs saw merit in publishing projections to say that taxes and other restrictions on unhealthy foods and beverages were more important than providing medical care for children with obesity. The argument was that […]

Letting go is hard. But there is a bright line between persistence and stubbornness. Persistence is absolutely necessary to advance a cause. But persistence gives way to stubbornness when facts line up to define serious limitations and people press on with a futile effort. Such is the case with the DiRECT obsession for “curing” type […]

Nope, says Dr. Alissa Chen. Medicare shouldn’t start covering obesity medicines. Her dad, 72, has obesity that began when he was in grad school and has persisted throughout his life. Now he has the cardiovascular disease that often results from untreated obesity. But no, she doesn’t want him to receive treatment with advanced medicines proven […]

Big change sometimes happens very quietly. For example, on April 5, the AP Stylebook added a new entry on “obesity, obese, overweight.” It goes into a great deal of detail about language for writing about obesity. But here is the heart of the matter, in the words of the Associated Press stylebook editors: “The phrasing […]

Progress comes in surprising ways. Proving this point, we now have a crude cartoon – South Park – telling the world that fat jokes are too offensive and stupid to be funny. One of the primary characters, Kyle, delivers this new enlightenment in a speech to his school cafeteria: “I was wrong. I used to […]

Recently, prominent singer and talk show host, Kelly Clarkson, admitted to taking medication to help with their weight, and the world is losing its mind, again. It seems more and more these days the “admission” of taking medication to treat a serious chronic disease is met with backlash by anyone really. Whether it’s family, friends, […]

We’re going to file this under “C” – for cluelessness. A new study in JAMA adds to the list of wellness strategies from people who have little understanding of obesity as a chronic disease. People who don’t understand that one-and-done weight loss does little to resolve the problem. The well-intended concept here is to pay […]

What does it take to change the explicit and implicit bias that people have about others and themselves based solely upon body weight or fatness? New research tells us that we should pay attention to cognitive dissonance. In other words, we should be asking, does our weight bias reflect our beliefs? Or is there a […]

Daniella Lamas is a critical care physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. She recalls telling the wife of a patient who was dying something she did not want to hear about her husband’s care. The woman told Lamas: “Why should I believe you? I don’t think that I do.” The Imperative for Trust […]

A fascinating new study is prompting some very clickable headlines this week. It is all about the interaction of genetic risk for obesity and physical activity. It shows that in people with higher genetic risk scores for obesity, the association between physical activity (using daily step counts as a surrogate) and BMI is different than […]