Addressing Medical Students’ Negative Bias Toward Patients With Obesity Through Ethics Education

Context: Negative bias toward patients with obesity is an ethical challenge in patient care. Several interventions to mitigate medical students' negative weight bias have been tried but none with an explicit focus on ethics. Here we describe first-year medical students' attitudes toward obesity and our effort to improve their attitudes through an innovative ethics session embedded within the required course, "Obesity, Nutrition, and Behavior Change," at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Methods: depicting negative weight bias. In addition, the 2017 cohort was surveyed 4 months later to evaluate the impact of different components of the session on students' self-reported attitudes. Results: video clips were useful. Conclusions: Medical students have negative attitudes about obesity that are consistent over time. Providing opportunities for students to discuss their personal experiences and beliefs about obesity within an ethics framework and using popular media as a basis for discussion might improve their attitudes toward obesity.