December 26, 2024 — This has been quite a year. We’ve seen endless death and destruction in Ukraine and the Middle East. People expressed discontent with the status quo in elections all over the world. But most notably for our readers – more than 100,000 of you this year – the progress on obesity and health has been nothing […]
December 17, 2024 — One of the harms that weight stigma causes is the avoidance of medical care. But an unexpected side effect of GLP-1 therapy in persons with overweight or obesity may be increased engagement with healthcare. This insight comes from a new analysis of electronic health records for 711,783 persons. As the use of these medicines for […]
April 14, 2024 — Quietly but firmly last year, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that it is A-OK for Texas Tech to fire a medical resident for obesity. No need to hear about whether she could do her job. Her “habitus” was a problem, they said. During a long and difficult emergency case, she was breathing heavily and sweated. […]
March 12, 2024 — “We must support people living with obesity by educating them about healthy lifestyles.” This is #4 in a series of well-meant statements that promote weight bias and discrimination. Such a statement purports to mean well. But there are so many problems with comments like this that it’s difficult to summarize them all in a short […]
March 5, 2024 — On this, the second day of Obesity Care Week, let’s step back from all the complexity of obesity and focus on five simple principles that hold great promise for improving the way we care for people with this disease. It really doesn’t have to be so hard. 1. It Is Undeniable That Obesity Is a […]
February 1, 2024 — Yesterday, the National Consumers League and the National Council on Aging introduced the Bill of Rights for People with Obesity. At the heart of eight simple points in this document is a demand of respect for the dignity and autonomy of people living with obesity. 1. The Right to Accurate, Clear, Trusted, and Accessible Information […]
May 13, 2023 — Every now and then, it feels really good to score a win. On Thursday, the New York City Council passed a bill to add weight and height to the city’s list of characteristics protected from discrimination. Presently, that list includes race, gender, age, religion, and sexual orientation. If Mayor Eric Adams signs this bill into […]
June 8, 2022 — This is definitely a season of renewed meetings. This week, we’ve been trying to follow both the ASMBS and ADA annual meetings at once. New information is flooding out of both of them. Today, from ASMBS, comes a fascinating new study of perceptions about weight bias across diverse racial and ethnic groups. People with White, […]
November 8, 2021 — At ObesityWeek®, we noticed a subtle shift. In past years, health policy discussions have sometimes been stuck on very detailed food fights. But this year, it seems that such food fights were less in the foreground. Instead, we saw a much greater focus than ever before on health equity, disparities, and the people who are […]
November 4, 2021 — A major thread running through ObesityWeek® is weight stigma, bias, and discrimination. Today at the Obesity Journal Symposium, the first paper presented will be a new study by a collection of distinguished weight bias researchers led by Rebecca Puhl. It is unique because it tells us that the public supports policy to stop weight discrimination […]
