Together we will examine the harm caused by the continued reliance on BMI and weight-based classifications in healthcare, public health, and research. Hanah Cytron, MPH, and Colleen Doak, PhD, bring together lived experience, public health research, and years of work examining weight stigma and the limitations and misclassification associated with BMI. Drawing from their collaborative work on Beyond BMI and Colleen’s extensive research on BMI, the session will explore how deeply weight-centered thinking has become embedded in healthcare and public health practice.
Participants will consider what becomes possible when we move away from BMI and the o-word and toward more meaningful measures of health, weight-neutral language, and care that respects the people receiving it. The presenters will also offer practical questions providers can use to examine when and why weight or BMI is influencing clinical decisions, including whether those decisions would change if a patient’s weight were unknown. This session invites participants not simply to recognize the limitations of BMI, but to begin changing the language, assumptions, and practices that allow weight stigma to continue causing harm.
The Association for Size Diversity and Health (ASDAH) is committed to the practice of Health at Every Size® (HAES®) principles
contact@asdah.org
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