June 2, 2022 — A new study of professionals with an interest in obesity reminds us that implicit and explicit weight bias seem to be on different tracks. It’s as if there’s been a fork in the road. On one hand, these obesity-focused professionals were less likely to show explicit weight bias than control groups of other persons. But […]
May 5, 2022 — This news from ECO2022, sadly, is not surprising. At an outstanding session on mental health and stigma, Sally Abbott presented new research on the implicit weight bias. In fact, she measured it in healthcare providers from UK bariatric services. These were mostly dietitians, psychologists, and nurses. More than 40 percent of these HCPs held implicit […]
February 20, 2022 — The hate crimes trial of three White men in Georgia who chased down and killed a Black man when he ran through their neighborhood is coming to an end. Mercifully, we have not had to listen to any of them testify that they don’t have a racist or hateful bone in their body. But let’s […]
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 […]
December 16, 2021 — Stages of Change is is a concept deeply embedded in our thinking about health behaviors and obesity. “How ready are you to change?” is the core question. But when applied to obesity care, it is a model with shameful power to promote implicit bias. A new perspective today in the New England Journal of Medicine […]
November 4, 2021 — A major thread running through ObesityWeek® is weight stigma, bias, and discrimination. Today at the Obesity Journal Symposium, the first paper presented will be a new study by a collection of distinguished weight bias researchers led by Rebecca Puhl. It is unique because it tells us that the public supports policy to stop weight discrimination […]
October 19, 2021 — FNCE is winding up today after four days of this virtual conference. For information on weight, health, and obesity, the agenda offered some bright spots – most especially content on the lived experience of obesity. But one subject was almost completely absent. Rigorous discussion about weight neutral care, including Health at Every Size, could not […]
June 24, 2021 — Writing in the Lancet, Janet Treasure and Suman Ambwani have a simple request. Public health policy should stop promoting weight stigma. The request is simple, but it may not be easy. For decades now, public health has often focused on promoting fear of fat, rather than the pursuit of health. The result is health policy […]
June 20, 2021 — We have a problem in healthcare. It’s really quite simple. Health systems have grown better at delivering health services than they are at delivering health care. It’s worse for people living with obesity, because prevailing bias leads health professionals to care even less for people with obesity. Add in racism and the problem grows larger […]
June 15, 2021 — Bias makes us human. It can even help us thrive by recognizing patterns in our lives. But of course, bias is sneaky, reinforcing patterns that keep people down for no good reason. So it is with weight bias – which some people believe causes more harm than obesity itself. One of the ways that weight […]
