Posts Tagged ‘obesity stigma’

Anecdotes and Studies of Lived Experiences with Obesity

March 19, 2023 — People want to be seen and heard. To feel like they matter. But in research and policy related to obesity, this fact was long neglected for many reasons. The principal reasons have much to do with stigma and the explicit dehumanization of people with this disease. With explicit efforts to overcome these issues, we see […]

Brendan Fraser Wins an Oscar for The Whale

March 13, 2023 — It was nothing short of cathartic for many people toiling in the tricky space of advocacy for people living with obesity. Brendan Fraser last night won an Oscar, Best Actor, for his portrayal of Charlie in The Whale. His character, Charlie, is dying from complications of obesity and the movie depicts him as a very […]

The World’s Most (Implicitly) Stigmatized Disease

February 25, 2023 — Justin Ryder is quite plain about obesity and the stigma attached to it. “It’s the most stigmatized disease in the world. In America, we view obesity as a personal behavior problem and not as a disease.” Ryder should know. He is a pediatric obesity scientist and a vice-chair of research at Lurie Children’s Hospital in […]

Are Semaglutide Supply Shortages Over?

February 3, 2023 — This is a story that’s been on repeat for well over a year. Novo Nordisk announced its business results for the full year of 2022 this week and declared that supply issues with Wegovy are over – almost. But the fact is that it’s not at all clear that the problem of supply shortages for […]

Competing Lies About Obesity Fall Apart

January 16, 2023 — We are living in a pivotal moment for the public understanding of a common and complex chronic disease. It is a moment when two competing, but very different, lies about obesity are falling apart. Simply Bad Choices On one hand, the big lie about obesity for decades has been that it is a simple matter […]

Obesity Guideline for Youth Draws Global Interest

January 12, 2023 — The new obesity care guideline for youth from the American Academy of Pediatrics is drawing global interest. On BBC World News, Geeta Guru-Murthy asked ConscienHealth’s Ted Kyle about this guideline and the need for medical care in young persons with obesity. Click here or on the image above for this brief video. The response to […]

Fear, Myths, and Obesity in Youth

January 10, 2023 — There’s nothing to spark surprise in the response to news that the American Academy of Pediatrics yesterday issued its first ever guidelines for obesity care in children and youth. The thought of actually providing care for obesity in youth is unsettling and thus is stirring up all kinds of fear and myths. In some cases, […]

Unsettling Arrival: A Pediatric Obesity Guideline

January 9, 2023 — This is indisputably good news. But the arrival of the first ever pediatric obesity treatment guideline is also most certainly unsettling. It’s good news because the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is finally saying that it’s not OK to sit back and watch kids for whom obesity is causing great harm to their health and […]

60 Minutes: Obesity Care in a Broken Health System

January 2, 2023 — On 60 Minutes last night, Lesley Stahl reported in vivid detail just how hard it is to get good obesity care in our broken system for healthcare. She had help. Two of the world’s top obesity medicine physicians – Fatima Cody Stanford and Caroline Apovian – took viewers into their clinics. Two of Apovian’s patients […]

The Nonsense of Asking “Who Deserves Care?”

December 10, 2022 — In a perverse way, there might be some good news in the current frothy coverage about new medicines for obesity and diabetes. We are a bit fed up with nonsense about who “deserves” access to  care with drugs like semaglutide. But it does serve to highlight some of the usually hidden biases about treating obesity. […]