October 9, 2023 — Words matter. The language we use to describe and discuss obesity conveys and sometimes betrays our understanding of this complex, chronic disease. It betrays that understanding because our implicit biases about obesity are sometimes at odds with our explicit, rational knowledge of it. With a new paper in Gastroenterology Clinics of North America, Ted Kyle, […]
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 […]
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 […]
