Tea Time: Weight Bias in Healthcare and Health At Every Size

• Weight Bias in Healthcare
  • Where does it come from?
    • Many providers hold negative attitudes and stereotypes about fat people
      • Assume they won't adhere to recommendations
      • Assume they are lazy, undisciplined and weak-willed
      • Treat them with less respect
  • What are the implications?
    • Quality of care can be impacted
      • Provider thinks weight is the source of all problems
      • Provider thinks weight loss will solve all problems
      • Provider may spend less time with fat patients
    • Fat people may avoid seeking care (f/u care) d/t stigma
      • They feel they are being shamed by their provider
      • They already know they are fat (maybe already working on it)
      • They don't feel their problems are being taken seriously
  • Ideas for improving the health care experience for fat patients
    • Waiting room chairs that fit all body sizes
    • Scales for all bodies
    • Blood Pressure cuffs in each room for all bodies
    • All staff and providers need to check their bias
    • Ask patient if they want to talk about their weight or is it ok if provider talks about it
• Association for Size Diversity and Health
  • Vision
    • We envision a world that celebrates bodies of all shapes and sizes, in which body weight is no longer a source of discrimination and where oppressed communities have equal access to the resources and practices that support health and well being.
  • Mission
    • ASDAH’s mission is to partner with service providers, educators and advocates to dismantle weight-centered health policies and practices, ensuring that people who live with multiple forms of oppression are focusing our work.
  • Guiding Values
    • RESPECT, INTEGRITY, JUSTICE, INCLUSIVENESS
• HAES supports people of all sizes in addressing health directly by adopting healthy behaviors. It is an inclusive movement, recognizing that our social characteristics, such as our size, race, national origin, sexuality, gender, disability status, and other attributes, are assets, and acknowledges and challenges the structural and systemic forces that impinge on living well.
• Components of HAES movement
  • Respect
    • Celebrates body diversity;
    • Honors differences in size, age, race, ethnicity, gender, dis/ability, sexual orientation, religion, class, and other human attributes.
  • Critical Awareness
    • Challenges scientific and cultural assumptions;
    • Values body knowledge and lived experiences.
  • Compassionate Self-Care
    • Finding the joy in moving one’s body and being physically active;
    • Eating in a flexible and attuned manner that values pleasure and honors internal cues of hunger, satiety, and appetite, while respecting the social conditions that frame eating options.