From Theory to Policy: Reducing Harms Associated with the Weight-Centered Health Paradigm

This article provides an overview of harms associated with public policy promotion of the weight-centered health paradigm and suggests that a shift away from weight-centered health policies is required. Given the evidence about the negative health implications of weight-centric health policies, the objectives are to explore why public policy officials uncritically rely on and promote the weight-centered health paradigm and to propose policy alternatives. Based on findings from discourse analysis of “obesity”-related 1 1. In this paper “overweight” and “obesity” are put in quotes in recognition of the stigmatizing and medicalized nature of these terms and the preference expressed by many in the fat studies community to instead use the word “fat” (Wann, 2009 Wann, M. 2009. “Foreword: Fat studies: An invitation to revolution”. In The fat studies reader, Edited by: Rothblum, E. and Solovay, S. New York: New York University Press. [Google Scholar]). policy documents, public health policy solutions to the weight-centered health paradigm are proposed and analyzed, drawing from ten key informant interviews with stakeholders working within the policy, academic, and medical contexts.