September 6, 2022 — A landmark expansion of access to medical care for people with low incomes is more than a decade old now. Where politics have not gotten in the way, Medicaid expansion clearly has had a broad effect on health in America. But something that’s less obvious is the benefit of a quiet, though uneven, expansion of […]
August 30, 2022 — We are living in a profoundly disorienting time. Because of this, we are learning that people have the capacity to rationionalize just about anything. People are plunging into rabbit holes where they encounter mazes of rationalizations about conspiracies all around them. It’s a great tool for politicians who find themselves on shaky ground. But now […]
August 11, 2022 — Weight bias in healthcare is getting in the way of meeting the primary mission of healthcare providers – improving the health of people seeking care. In fact, for people with severe obesity, there’s good reason to believe that weight bias in healthcare does more immediate harm that obesity itself. A brilliant new narrative synthesis in […]
July 28, 2022 — State and federal experts on health are quite happy to talk about the serious health concern of obesity. But we can’t help wondering about the action that results from that talk. So it’s worthwhile to take a good look at what state health plans do for people affected by obesity. According to a new study […]
July 27, 2022 — It’s a lot. Writing for USA Today, Karen Weintraub has produced a deep dive into diverse thinking about the complexity of obesity. If you thought USA Today was a place for McNuggets* of superficial reporting, think again. In six parts, with more than 18,000 words, Weintraub has done quite well in painting a picture of […]
July 16, 2022 — On the first full day of YWM Engage, it was plain that this was a different sort of convention for OAC. It was smaller. The group was being very cautious because this rotten pandemic, though it’s less of a threat, isn’t over. So the agenda got right down to the business of bringing everyone up […]
June 26, 2022 — Health at Every Size® is both an idea and a trademark. The trademark is owned by the Association for Size Diversity and Health. The idea is all about a view of health independent of a person’s weight. So folks who travel in the HAES® orbit take a dim view of the word obesity – even […]
June 24, 2022 — 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 […]
June 23, 2022 — It is, quite simply, inspiring to spend an entire day with with a team of people dedicated to doing nothing but advancing the care of young persons living with obesity. We had this privilege yesterday at the University of Minnesota Center for Pediatric Obesity Medicine (CPOM). These are people dedicating themselves to bringing progress to […]
June 11, 2022 — “This is a cane that’s going to help you walk. But you’re going to have to do the walk yourself.” This is how Dr. Zhaoping Li explains why she prescribes anti-obesity medicines to patients only after lifestyle changes have failed. But words like failure betray an implicit bias about obesity. They contradict the understanding of […]
