Posts Tagged ‘weight stigma’

New Orleans is in a world of hurt right now. That’s because COVID-19, obesity, disparities, and denial have come together and contributed to a grotesque catastrophe. The city leads all other cities in the U.S. on deaths per capita from COVID-19. Obesity and the complications of untreated obesity are important factors. As of yesterday, out […]

Many people can agree on one thing about obesity. Certainly, it’s clear that we live in a toxic environment that promotes the condition. We can debate what elements are most responsible. Is it the food supply or the structures of our lives that keep us inactive? Then we have to consider toxic chemicals, drugs, and […]

If lofty rhetoric about childhood obesity were helpful, we would be done here. But four decades of that rhetoric have proven not to be helpful. Back in 1974, the Lancet told us that adult obesity would most likely never be cured. However, with vigilance throughout childhood, most obesity could be prevented, they said. In 2002, […]

This is a remarkable day for two big reasons. For one thing, it marks the first ever unified Worldwide Obesity Day. That by itself is impressive enough. But even more impressive is a global commitment to end weight stigma, published late yesterday in Nature Medicine. This commitment, developed by 36 distinguished experts from all over […]

Today for Obesity Care Week, the focus is weight bias, which lies at the core of our problems with making progress against obesity. It’s the core problem because it frustrates us in two ways. First of all, intellectual bias about obesity itself leads some very smart people to think (and say) some very dumb things […]

When medical students become doctors, at least four out of ten patients they see will suffer the effects of obesity. And yet, for many medical schools, obesity care education is a low priority. For some schools, not even the basics are a big priority. This finding comes from an important new study published in BMC […]

It is a telling choice of words. More than half of black women over age 20 are categorized as obese, wrote Joseph Williams. Half of America will be considered obese within this decade, says Alyssa Bethencourt. Oliver Williams writes that 18.9 per cent of children in Year 6 are classified as overweight or obese. These […]

Trust and vulnerability are two closely related dimensions of the relationship between healthcare providers and patients. Trust arises from vulnerability, wrote Mark Hall. But when providers judge patients, they violate that trust. New research in JAMA Network Open tells us that this breach of trust might be relatively common. And it has serious consequences. That’s […]

We share a dream for 2020. Perhaps it can be a year when weight talk gets an injection of compassion. Imagine how life would be if everyone thought about how they could do their part. Here are four ideas. 1. Call out bias and fat phobia. This is more difficult than you think as we […]