May 12, 2021 — Two days into a week of intense meetings about obesity science and policy at #ECO2021 and #COS7, one thing is hard to miss. The quality of research and analysis is strong. But people living with obesity are front and center. In fact, we see strong confident voices for persons living with obesity. Not sad victims. […]
May 9, 2021 — It sounds apocryphal. Yet it’s fresh and real. Da’Shaun Harrison, an author and activist, had just arrived at an Atlanta hospital with COVID-19, was lying on a stretcher, and terrified of dying. A male nurse approached and said, “Wow, you’re big. The first thing we need to do is get this weight off you.” Neither […]
May 5, 2021 — Weight bias envelopes us. But especially in healthcare systems it is jarring at times. Pervasively, weight bias is coded into health systems. Sometimes it’s subtle. Other times it smacks a patient right in the face. Change is slow because systems evolve slowly. Electronic medical records systems, for example, take years to design and implement. So […]
April 17, 2021 — 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 […]
April 6, 2021 — From the very early days COVID-19, we saw clues that two pandemics might be interacting – COVID-19 and obesity. But we are not fans of catastrophizing health health problems. So the question becomes, how can we come to terms with these synergistic pandemics? Can we do it in a way that brings us closer to […]
March 21, 2021 — “You can’t lift people up by putting them down.” As part of a series on the future of advocacy, this is how Trabian Shorters explains the importance of asset framing – building upon a community’s assets. But too often, we start with the deficits. Shorters points this out in the context of racial justice. It […]
March 16, 2021 — Bias and stigma are not confined to obesity. And in fact, a considerable body of research tells us that far too many people with diabetes experience it and it is greatest in people who require insulin, have more difficulty controlling the disease, and have a higher BMI. Though stigma can be a problem for people […]
March 12, 2021 — Let them choose is a seductive maxim for guiding health policy. In one sense, it seems perfectly reasonable. You get to choose. We respect personal agency. But it can also be quite punitive. You made your choices, now you have a chronic disease. You’re on your own. Sorry. A new paper in the Future Healthcare […]
March 10, 2021 — The scramble for COVID-19 vaccination is clearly messy. For one thing, people who need it most have found it hard to get. And then we have others, with sharp elbows and privilege, who want to be at the front of the line. To claim priority that public health guidelines don’t grant them. So when you […]
March 3, 2021 — Today for Obesity Care Week (OCW2021), the focus is access to care. But access to care is not such a tidy, self-contained subject. That’s because the problems we have with access to obesity care often actually start with weigh bias – the OCW2021 theme for Monday. Let us explain with the experience of a good […]
