Posts Tagged ‘weight discrimination’

A news item from San Antonio has us wondering: do injuries to people with obesity or other chronic diseases matter less? A young woman and her fiancé were hurt by a driver who ran a red light and totaled her car, according to reporters at the local television station, KSAT. In settling the claim for her […]

Healthcare fails people with obesity every day, serving up harsh judgments and substandard care. Any person who is severely affected can tell you about it, but few people stop to listen. The result is an ever growing burden of diseases that stem from this chronic disease largely ignored by our healthcare system. Sara Kirk and […]

Though there’s plenty we’re not doing about obesity that we should — like adequate research to really understand, prevent, and treat the disease — way too much energy is going into the wrong things. Here are five things to stop doing. Credit goes to to Ragen Chastain for providing a starting point in Dances with […]

Obesity discrimination poses growing risks for employers that target obesity in their employment practices. The Risk and Compliance Journal of the Wall Street Journal identified three factors contributing to the increasing risk: Recognition as a disease by the American Medical Association has markedly increased the risks for employers to be sued for workplace discrimination. Previously […]

The way bias trumps evidence in obesity treatment and policy, blissful ignorance is never in short supply. Here are three appalling examples. Celebrity “Experts.” Folks like Mehmet Oz shout out evidence-free opinions that the media publish as facts. These folks are selling only one product — themselves. But along the way, Oz routinely promotes “weight […]

Name-calling is something that civility puts out of bounds, especially when the subject is someone with a chronic disease or a disability. Decades have passed since it was permissible to demean people by labeling them with a disability or a chronic condition. Labels like “cripples,” “autistics,” and “epileptics” have — thankfully — passed out of […]

Weight Bias is someone else’s problem — until you turn it on yourself and begin to believe it diminishes your self-worth. This internalized weight bias is the subject of some new research that sheds light on the uniquely destructive effects of weight bias turned inward. People with internalized weight bias essentially buy into false stereotypes […]

Obesity will change hospitals as they face the fact that they must adapt and accommodate patients with obesity. The latest report in the annual series by Novation finds that only 25% of 125 hospitals surveyed have invested to accommodate patients with severe obesity. Here are five key changes that hospitals must make: Architectural Design. Doorways […]

Social pressure related to obesity is everywhere, and much of it is an expression of weight bias. But a recent publication in Eating and Weight Disorders provides a reminder that social pressure is a two-way street. Jessica Harper and Robert Carels found that social feedback has great potential to impact the expression of stereotypes against […]

In an ongoing skirmish about healthy body images with fashion publications, Jezebel recently overreached and caused some to wonder, “Is this issue becoming moot?” Jezebel offered a $10,000 bounty for unretouched photos of Lena Dunham taken for Vogue, saying “her body is real” but the images of her in Vogue are “probably not terribly real.” After […]