November 29, 2022 — Stigma serves as an anchor to policy for reducing obesity in Mexico and it renders those policies ineffective. That’s the view James René Jolin, Lauren Kim, Verónica Vázquez-Velázquez, and Fatima Cody Stanford eloquently present in Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology this week. They write: “Recalibrating the prevailing approach to obesity is essential to counteract the stigma […]
November 22, 2022 — This is a note of gratitude to Julia Belluz. In a guest essay for the New York Times, she writes beautifully and accessibly about a great gap. It is the gap between science and popular culture in the matter of obesity. She does it while reporting on the recent Royal Society meeting about the causes […]
August 16, 2022 — An article of faith in the fat acceptance community is the idea that weight stigma causes more harm than obesity itself. In the extreme, there’s a belief that we should do away will any reference to obesity. People hold this belief because they think the health harm ascribed to obesity actually comes from weight stigma. […]
May 29, 2022 — Public health should stop talking about obesity, says a policy brief from University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health. “Replace assignments connecting ‘obesity’ and health,” suggests the brief. Cancel the word obesity and weight stigma will fade. That seems to be the thinking there. At the other extreme, we have folks who love to […]
April 12, 2022 — Your health is in your hands. With these words, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky captures the essence of flawed thinking about public health. These words also capture the pervasive bias that gets in the way of coping well with both the COVID-19 pandemic and with obesity. This is the presumption that personal responsibility will take care […]
July 4, 2021 — This is a day for Americans to celebrate independence. Though the holiday marks independence from a colonial power, Americans invest a lot in a broader concept of independence. Dependence on others for many things – including care for health – is essential for strong communities, and yet Americans celebrate a spirit of independence. It wasn’t […]
