Background: Weight stigma among health professions students can undermine future patient care and contribute to healthcare avoidance among individuals with obesity. Traditional educational approaches may not consistently foster empathy, bias awareness, or patient-centered communication, underscoring the need for innovative, evidence-based strategies that promote durable professional growth. Objective: This study examined whether embodied obesity simulation during exercise reduces weight bias, increases empathy, and enhances professional competencies in undergraduate health professions students. Hypothesis: We hypothesized that students completing an embodied obesity simulation during exercise would exhibit greater reductions in implicit and explicit weight bias and greater gains in empathy and reflective learning than exercise-only or control participants. Methods: Undergraduate health professions students (n = 107; 20.9 ± 1.2 years; 49% women) were randomized to control (CON; n = 35), exercise-only (EX; n = 36), or exercise with obesity simulation suit (EXS; n = 36) conditions. EX and EXS completed 30-minute treadmill sessions matched for workload (5.0 METs), while CON engaged in professional communication activities. Measures were collected at baseline and at 1- and 8-week follow-ups, including implicit bias (Weight Implicit Association Test), explicit bias (Fat Phobia Scale, Anti-Fat Attitudes), empathy (Jefferson Scale of Empathy), clinical decision-making, behavioral intentions toward weight-inclusive care, and reflective learning depth. Physiological (heart rate) and psychological (RPE, discomfort, affective valence) responses confirmed the embodied experience. Results: EXS produced a distinct embodied experience characterized by higher physiological demand and reduced positive affect compared with EX and CON. Significant improvements occurred only in EXS participants at both 1-week and 8-week follow-ups, including reductions in implicit bias (η 2 = 0.16) and willpower attributions (η 2 = 0.15), and increases in empathy (η 2 = 0.12), reflective learning (η 2 = 0.21), and compassion in clinical decision-making (η 2 = 0.14). Intentions to provide weight-inclusive, patient-centered care also improved (η 2 = 0.21). Regression analyses indicated that greater affective challenge during simulation was associated with larger improvements across outcomes, suggesting that emotional engagement played a key role in bias reduction and professional growth. Conclusions: Embodied obesity simulation during exercise is an effective, evidence-based pedagogical approach that enhances empathy, reduces weight bias, and strengthens professional competencies among health professions students. This brief, single-session intervention offers educators a practical, scalable way to integrate experiential learning and stigma reduction into health curricula, ultimately preparing future practitioners to provide more equitable and compassionate care across the weight spectrum. This abstract was presented at the American Physiology Summit 2026 and is only available in HTML format. There is no downloadable file or PDF version. The Physiology editorial board was not involved in the peer review process.
Ruegsegger et al. (Fri,) studied this question.