Posts Tagged ‘medical education’

It would be odd to think that medical schools would stigmatize the most prevalent chronic disease that medical students will encounter. But stigmatizing obesity in medical schools is all too common, even today. Kofi Essel and colleagues published a study of the obesity bias observed by third year medical students at George Washington University School […]

Right now, it seems that medical education is failing to prepare students to deal with the most prevalent chronic disease in America – obesity. In an interview with STAT last month, FDA Commissioner Robert Califf noted this failure. “I think it’s a shame that you would need to depend on a pharmaceutical company for an […]

After years of having not much to offer people suffering from the health effects of obesity, healthcare providers find themselves climbing a learning curve in obesity medicine. The pressure is here because the options for medical care of obesity have leapt forward recently. Minimally invasive bariatric surgery can offer dramatic improvements in health. Advanced medicines […]

It’s rare to find a robust conversation about medical care for obesity and the bias that gets in the way. But that’s exactly what the 1A podcast delivered yesterday. Fatima Cody Stanford, Lulu Garcia-Navarro, and Kamilah Weems joined the show to talk about the perfect storm of bias that gets in the way of good […]

Around the world, we have a big obesity knowledge gap in medical schools. A few years ago, Marissa Mastrocola and colleagues documented this in the International Journal of Obesity. But the good news is that people are working on closing that gap. This week, a group of medical educators published a new set of obesity […]

The first ever systematic review and meta-analysis of weight bias in healthcare professionals is bracing. Blake Lawrence and colleagues have just published it in Obesity. It tells us that weight bias in healthcare has been fully visible for three decades. But the work of reversing it has barely begun. The authors of this analysis note […]

Obesity is growing more prevalent for all. But at the same time, racial and ethnic disparities are growing wider. In the U.S., 42 percent of adults have obesity. For Black women, that number is 57 percent. Despite this high prevalence and wide disparity, though, medical education board exams skip right over obesity and disparities. The […]

To be an educator might not mean much for a person’s income. But it confers tremendous power over the lives of students and thus our communities. Two publications this week remind us of the great power that educators have – for better or worse – in weight bias. Affirmation by a Teacher In a video […]

The COVID-19 pandemic has thrust the obesity epidemic once again into the spotlight, revealing that obesity is no longer a disease that harms just in the long run but one that can have acutely devastating effects. New studies and information confirm doctors’ suspicion that this virus takes advantage of a disease that our current U.S. […]

When medical students become doctors, at least four out of ten patients they see will suffer the effects of obesity. And yet, for many medical schools, obesity care education is a low priority. For some schools, not even the basics are a big priority. This finding comes from an important new study published in BMC […]