Perspectives of a multimodule weight stigma intervention for prehealth undergraduate students

To address weight stigma, theory-driven interventions and multiweek curricula have been implemented but often lack the in-depth perspectives of student and instructor. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to qualitatively explore the feasibility and implementation of a weight-bias pedagogical intervention into a preexisting first-year experience (FYE) university course from both instructor and student perspectives. Following course completion, the instructors (n = 3) and some students (n = 13) participated in semistructured interviews assessing their experiences regarding the implementation of the intervention, their experiences throughout the course, and recommendations for the future. Thematic analysis yielded eight themes: Three themes reflected responses from both the instructors and students (videos and podcasts were effective, valued class discussions, wanted more content and time), and five themes were represented by instructor perspectives only (resources for teachers were helpful, integrated well with social justice focus, dealt with time constraints, saw value in the intervention, reflected personal weight bias). Findings suggest that a weight-stigma pedagogical intervention can be feasibly implemented into an existing social-justice-themed (FYE) college course by nonexperts when they are provided training and resources. A continued focus on media sources (videos, podcasts) and classroom discussions and additional training and support for instructors, seem likely to improve the impact of this type of intervention.