Voices

Giving Voice to People Living with Obesity

Giving voice to people living with obesity is a theme that is running through the Fourth Canadian Obesity Summit in Toronto. On every day of the meeting, people living with obesity have been playing an active and visible role in the agenda presenting personal reflections, presenting their own research, and giving interviews to media attending the meeting.

In the final session of the day on Friday, Obesity Action Coalition Chairman Ted Kyle presented the U.S. experience with creating an advocacy organization for people living with obesity. He told a group of about 100 in attendance that:

Pervasive bias compromises research, practice, health, and policy for addressing obesity. Humanizing obesity by giving voice to people living with the condition is the key to reducing bias. And finally, we are seeing progress — albeit slow — from empowering people, confronting bias, advocating better access to medical care, and supporting innovative research to reduce the impact of obesity.

The leadership of the Canadian Obesity Network that organizes this summit consistently does a remarkable job of bringing diverse voices together to consider the challenges that obesity presents: lawyers, economists, basic scientists, clinical scientists, healthcare professionals, public health professionals, and social scientists.

Now you can add people living with obesity to that list.

Click here for Kyle’s slides and here for a story from Toronto’s National Post about human rights concerns about obesity discussed at the summit.

Voices, photograph © Fryderyk / flickr

Subscribe by email to follow the accumulating evidence and observations that shape our view of health, obesity, and policy.


 

2 Responses to “Giving Voice to People Living with Obesity”

  1. May 02, 2015 at 6:13 am, Joe Gitchell said:

    Go, Ted, go!! Yeah!!

    • May 02, 2015 at 5:05 pm, Ted said:

      Your voice might be a primal scream, Joe. Thanks!