ECO2025: Setting the Agenda for Ending Weight Bias

ECO2025 in Málaga, Spain, today (Sunday) started off with a sweeping review of weight bias, obesity stigma, and strategies for ending them. It’s a big ambition. But it was an honor for ConscienHealth to participate with an array of experts in the subject.

The thought to take away from it is simply that progress is real and incomplete – but we have a clear agenda for the work to undertake going forward.

The Impact on Real People

Vicki Mooney opened this teaching workshop with an account that was both personal and professional because she is Executive Director of ECPO – the European Coalition for People Living with Obesity. It’s personal because this is something she has experienced for a lifetime.

“I was a 10-year-old girl with an incredibly active childhood. I ate all the same things everyone did. But I was the one who gained weight. What I did not know was that obesity has a genetic basis. I believed I had done something wrong. That is what everyone told me. I was called ‘the fat one.’”

The State of Knowledge

Professor Angela Alberga presented an impressive distillation of everything we know about weight stigma – its consequences, how it intersects with every part of a person’s life, and interventions to reduce it.

Preventing Weight Bias in Healthcare

Nicole Pearce told us that education – both foundational and ongoing – is one of the most effective tools we have to reduce weight bias in healthcare. But it has to be intentional, evidence-based, and inclusive of patient perspectives. She explained  testing of the Calibre program and frameworks like the Canadian Obesity Education Competencies are a step forward in creating more respectful, effective, and equitable care for people living with obesity.

Setting an Overarching Goal in the U.S.

ConscienHealth’s Ted Kyle presented a review of the work the Obesity Care Advocacy Network has done in the U.S. toward ending weight bias. He said weight bias is, in fact, a fundamental obstacle to the network’s purpose of improving access to obesity care. Presently, access is woefully inadequate, largely because of weight bias.

The Research Agenda

Finally, Marilou Côté presented framework for closing gaps in knowledge about weight bias and obesity stigma and interventions to reduce it. This framework came from the 2024 International Weight Bias Summit in Montreal. Future research needs to address questions related to policy, consequences, methodology, interventions, implementation, and diversity.

We have work to do.

Click here for the slides from this outstanding review.

Málaga Harbor, photograph by Aaron Kelly, PhD

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May 11, 2025