Posts Tagged ‘weight discrimination’

Writing in the Washington Post this week, Courtland Milloy went looking for answers. How can it be that black women are defying a trend of declining life expectancy? Among other things, obesity challenges the health of black women more than almost any other demographic group. So why is it that while life expectancy for all Americans […]

A pair of new publications today in Obesity addresses medical care for children with obesity, leaving us both encouraged and profoundly discouraged. Encouragement comes from the fact that smart people from many different disciplines are finally coming together to solve a serious problem that destroys the lives of millions of children, starting at an early […]

What could be worse than living with obesity and feeling like you’re invisible? How about having the whole world watch while you work on your weight under the terms of an employment contract? That’s a circumstance that actress Chrissy Metz is embracing. When she signed on for the role of Kate in the hit show, […]

At ObesityWeek in New Orleans plenty of good research and insight could be found on the subject of weight bias. As we reported earlier, public attitudes seem to be shifting. For the first time, U.S. adults are accepting the idea that obesity is a medical condition that requires care, not blame. And multiple indicators of […]

New research to be presented at ObesityWeek 2016 indicates that weight shaming may be easing a bit. At the same time, the public increasingly understands that obesity is a medical condition. Between 2013 and 2016, public perception of obesity as a “personal problem of bad choices” has dropped from 44% to 34%. On top of that, […]

AARP is asking a federal court to strike down rules from the EEOC that smooth the way for wellness penalties. Those penalties can add up to thousands of dollars a year if an employee does not hand over confidential medical information to an employer’s wellness program. The next step in many of these programs is […]

A rather confused story about banning obesity in worship came out of Oregon recently. The New Creation Church of Hillsboro attracted attention to its Worship Team Guidelines, which seemed to ban people with obesity from leading worship: No Excessive weight. Weight is something that many people have to deal with. Make sure that you are taking […]

Here we are at the end of the week that started with the most-watched presidential debate of all time, and people are still talking about a fat shaming wisecrack from Donald Trump. When Trump mentioned a hacker “sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds” Monday night, it seemed like an afterthought. But now, people […]

When a small group of international advocates for people living with obesity  gathered in Copenhagen this week, we noted a huge gap. In HIV, cancer, and diabetes, for example, patients are at the center of policymaking. In obesity, we are often shunned or ignored. It takes courage to advocate in this realm. Support for change […]

Weight-based discrimination at work is a familiar problem for people living with obesity. But new research suggests that the problem might even affect people who don’t have obesity. Dennis Nickson and colleagues found weight-based discrimination against women even with BMI in a range considered to be healthy. In fact, they found that a woman with BMI of […]