New Healthcare Advocacy Resources from NAAFA
[Accessibility description: The cover of NAAFA’s updated Guide for Healthcare Providers with Fat Clients features the publication title in blue font and a photo of a thin, white, masculine medical professional in blue scrubs talking to a fat, white, masculine patient in a blue and white hospital gown.]
By Tigress Osborn, Executive Director of NAAFA
NAAFA is regularly accused of not caring about fat people’s health. As an organization that asks the world to accept fatness and embrace fat people regardless of whether or not we are, have been, or ever will be on a “weight loss journey,” we at NAAFA are regularly told we are glorifying ob*sity and contributing to a global healthcare crisis by not telling those fatties to slim down. If we truly cared about fat people, we’d tough love them into being smaller, wouldn’t we?
The idea that we are sabotaging fat people’s wellness by expecting fair treatment for fat people is preposterous. Decades of treating fat people unfairly and disrespectfully have not reduced weights or waistlines anywhere in the world, and even if they had, there would still be fat people. And no one’s rights should be dependent on their body size or their health profile.
Anti-fatness is systemic, and the healthcare system is one of the most discriminatory systems fat people face. Weight bias in healthcare is what brings many people to fat liberation’s door. NAAFA is a fat rights organization, and our work is not always focused on health and wellness advocacy. But our mission to change perceptions of fat and to end size discrimination demands that we address healthcare inequity as part of the change we want to see in the world. Our community deserves information, advice, and care that is not dependent on weight loss goals or outcomes.
NAAFA’s Medical Advocacy Committee is where our healthcare resources get created and maintained. The committee is currently led by board member and longtime fat activist Elaine Lee. It includes healthcare providers, public health experts, scientists, and other advocates working to ensure that fat people’s care is based on our actual health profiles rather than assumptions and predictions. The committee works with weight-inclusive organizations and professionals to update our existing healthcare resources and to create new resources for self-advocacy and for sharing with the professionals fat people encounter as we pursue healthcare (physicians, nutritionists, therapists, and more).
In June, Elaine was joined by committee member Kate Waterous to present at the 12th Annual International Weight Stigma Conference about the committee’s work and the new publications we are releasing this summer. You can find these on the NAAFA website today:
Guide for Healthcare Providers with Fat Clients
Guide for Measuring Blood Pressure For Fat Patients
Information for Patients Considering GLP-1s for Weight Loss
GLP-1 Medications and Weight: A Fat Advocacy Perspective for Healthcare Providers
Coming later this year, you’ll find other newly revised guides and info sheets, including information for mental health providers and nutritionists. The committee is also working with other NAAFA committees and advisors to review other popular NAAFA publications and to develop new ones. Team NAAFA is also working on updates to existing resources, such as our travel planning guide and our death planning hub, as well as new tools for public policy advocacy, fat-friendly event planning, and more.
Want to suggest other resources or volunteer to work on these projects? Reach out to us at naafa.org/contact to share your thoughts!
For another perspective on healthcare from a weight-inclusive physician, check out our latest blog post by Dra. Mónica Peralta.
