June 5, 2023 — One of the neat tricks of semaglutide and tirzepatide is their unexpected ability to shift the frames of bias through which we look at obesity and human behavior. Neuroscience and behavioral psychology have long told us the human desire for food is not purely a matter of choice. Yet in addressing obesity, weight bias and […]
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 […]
May 10, 2022 — Cancer is not just exuberant cell growth. Nor is depression simply a matter of feeling sad. Likewise obesity is not a simple matter of living in a larger body. But cancer, depression, and obesity are medical words that can be daunting and also misused. And each of them can bring stigma to complicate any efforts […]
May 7, 2022 — The sheer volume of information that emerges from an international conference like ECO2022 is overwhelming. We will be digesting new insights for months after the conference concludes today. One source of insights comes from a massive global survey of teen obesity presented Thursday – ACTION Teens. Perhaps it should not be a surprise. But this […]
March 27, 2022 — Weight bias is a moving target. It is moving from a shout to a quiet murmur, from explicit shaming to implicit insults. In 2015, a peer-reviewed medical journal would publish advice to tell patients bluntly that obesity is their fault. With an AJM editorial then, Robert Doroghazi wrote that he thought it best to confront […]
March 24, 2022 — The economy of shame and pride is at work in human cultures everywhere. Public shaming can take aim at whole countries and companies or at random individuals. In The Shame Machine, Cathy O’Neil describes shame as the foundation for an industry that can destroy people: “Humiliation lingers in the mind, the heart, the veins, the […]
February 19, 2022 — To folks who concern themselves with eating disorders, this is not news. Rather, it is confirmation. The pandemic has brought a sharp rise in eating disorders. A new report yesterday in the MMWR provides solid documentation. In fact, the proportion of emergency department visits with eating disorders doubled for teenage girls during the pandemic. Emily […]
February 17, 2022 — If a patient is Black, health providers are more than twice as likely to put negative words in that patient’s health history. These are descriptors like hysterical, noncompliant, unpleasant, or uncooperative. Those word choices don’t suggest a good relationship with a patient. This conclusion comes from an analysis of records for 18,459 patients, published recently […]
November 28, 2021 — Medical terms can carry a lot of baggage. Leprosy, cancer, diabetes, autism, and obesity are just a few examples. What they all have in common is that they describe conditions that can cause a lot of trouble, but either don’t or didn’t have an easy resolution. So to greater or lesser degrees, people attached stigma […]
September 4, 2021 — Suffering creates a vacuum. But health stigma is always ready to fill that vacuum, so blame and shame flow in and amplify the suffering. This has long been the case with obesity. We’re now seeing it come into play with COVID and even with the intersection of COVID and obesity. This is called blaming the […]
