Canadians Widely Support Policies and Legal Protection Agains Weight Discrimination
According to a four-country survey published by Rebecca Puhl and colleagues in the Milbank Quarterly, a representative proportion of the public in Canada, USA, Iceland and Australia, where weight-based discrimination is widely documented would support policies and legal protections against this practice. The survey assessed public support for potential laws to prohibit weight-based discrimination, such as adding body weight to existing civil rights statutes, extending disability protections to persons with obesity, and instituting legal measures to prohibit employers from discriminating against employees because of body weight. At least two-thirds of the participants in all 4 countries expressed support for policies that would make it illegal for employers to refuse to hire, assign lower wages, deny promotions, or terminate qualified employees because of body weight. Women and participants with higher body weight expressed more support for antidiscrimination measures. Here is what Canadians had to say about these issues: Canadians expressed more support for all the proposed laws against weight-based discrimination than did the participants in both Iceland and the United States. 70% to 91% of participants in Canada, US, and Iceland supported laws that would make it illegal for employers to refuse to hire, assign lower wages, deny promotion, or terminate qualified employees because of their body weight. Support was highest for laws that would prohibit employers from assigning lower wages to qualified employees because of their weight. The majority of participants (both adult and student samples) in the United States, Canada, and Australia agreed that their government should have specific laws prohibiting weight discrimination, and they supported laws that would include body weight in existing human rights statutes. 71% to 87% of adults and 69% to 93% of students in all the countries in our study were in favour of passing laws to address bullying in the workplace. laws that would consider obesity as a disability or would provide people with obesity the same legal protections afforded to individuals with physical disabilities received the least support of all laws women were significantly more likely to support antidiscrimination measures than men were support for laws across countries was higher among participants in the obese BMI range than among thinner individuals Beliefs that obesity is caused by factors outside of personal control, such as physiological and environmental factors, were particularly related to increased support for laws In Canada only, beliefs in psychological causes of obesity were positively associated with greater support for laws Certainly enough… Read More »
Invitation To Join The Canadian Obesity Network
For the past eight weeks, the Canadian Obesity Network, a group of over 11,000 individuals with a professional interest in obesity research, prevention and management, has opened its doors to the public. Canadians living with obesity can now access credible information on obesity and get involved in the many activities of the network. Clinicians can now send their patients to the Canadian Obesity Network and encourage them to subscribe to a monthly newsletter – the first edition of which will appear in the next few weeks. Canadians living with obesity (or for that matter anyone with an interest in obesity) can also join the discussion on facebook @DrSharma Vancouver, BC
What Do Clinicians Need To Know To Better Manage Obesity?
Given that the vast majority of clinicians have learnt little about managing obesity in their professional training (and even that may be an overstatement), one of the biggest challenges today is to train health professionals to help their patients better manage their obesity. Now the Canadian Obesity Network has partnered with mdBriefcase, the largest provider of online continuing medical education for health professionals in Canada, to created online courses on obesity management. In order to ensure that these courses meet the needs of the various groups of health professionals, the Canadian Obesity Network is now conducting a survey aimed at health professionals working in Canada. What’s in it for you? As a small token of appreciation, mdBriefcase is offering the 1st, 25th, 50th, 75th and 100th participant a $25 Starbucks or Petro Canada gift card! What will happen with the information that is collected? Answers will be collected and analyzed by the Canadian Obesity Network and mdBriefCase. This data will be kept secure and confidential and used for education development planning. Anonymised data will be used by the Canadian Obesity Network and mdBriefCase in undertaking the analysis and in preparing any published reports of the survey. If you are a family physician or nurse practitioner – click here If you are a specialist, nurse or allied healthcare provider (e.g. RD, OT, PT, social worker, etc.) – click here If you are a Pharmacist – click here And if you are a patient and wished there was something your health care provider knew about better helping you manage your obesity, please feel free to leave a comment. @DrSharma Vancouver, BC
What Are The Outcomes Of Bariatric Surgery in Teens?
With the increasing number of youth living with severe obesity and the lack of good conservative treatments, it is not surprising that the volume of bariatric surgery performed in adolescents is on the rise. Now a study by Thomas Inge and colleagues, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, examines the efficacy and safety of bariatric surgery in teens. The prospective study was conducted in 242 adolescents (mean age 17 y) undergoing Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (161 participants) or sleeve gastrectomy (67) at 5 US centres. With the caveat that 15% of participants were lost to follow-up and laboratory data was missing in 24% of participants, the authors report that at 3 years, the mean weight had decreased by 27% with remission of type 2 diabetes in 95% of participants who had had the condition at baseline. Other improvements in health included remission of abnormal kidney function occurred in 86%, remission of prediabetes in 76%, remission of elevated blood pressure in 74%, and remission of dyslipidemia in 66% of those who had these conditions. On the other hand, surgery was not without risks.: 57% of participants developed iron deficiencies and 13% of participants required at least one additional intraabdominal operation. Thus, despite significant health benefits and improvement in quality of life, patients do have to be carefully monitored for nutritional deficiencies. Obviously, 3 years is not a long period in the life of an adolescent and it will certainly take far longer follow-up to determine the durability of these findings. Also, there remain significant questions about the psychosocial impact that surgery may have (both positive and negative) on the further development of these young participants. Nevertheless, till we have better conservative treatments for severe obesity it appears that bariatric surgery may well be a viable treatment option for this population. @DrSharma Vancouver, BC
Use Of Fitbit to Measure Exercise Adherence
Based on the number of patients that appear in my practice wearing a Fitbit, I do wonder what research on the use of this activity monitoring device actually shows. Interestingly, despite the popularity of this device, studies in scientific journals using Fitbit as an intervention to increase physical activity are rather sparse (most studies focus on validity of measurement). Thus, I was interested in a study by Lisa Cadmus-Bertram and colleagues from the University of Wisconsin published in JMIR mHealth. The rather small study involved 25 overweight or obese, postmenopausal women enrolled in the intervention arm of a randomized controlled physical activity intervention trial. Over 16 weeks, each participant was advised to use the Fitbit physical activity tracker and website. Evidently, the participants were happy wearing the device as the median participant logged 10 hours or more/day of Fitbit wear on 95% of the 112 intervention days, with no significant decline in wear over the study period. Overall, participants averaged 7,540 (goal 10,000) steps/day and 82 minutes/week (goal 150) of accumulated “fairly active” and “very active” minutes during the intervention. After peaking at 3 weeks, there was a small declines of 8% for steps and 14% for MVPA by 16 weeks. So the devices were used and the participants did achieve and maintain a moderate level of daily physical activity. The question remains, however, as to how representative these data actually are. After all these were a rather small number of volunteers in a research study – perhaps not your everyday user. Nevertheless, the benefits of self-monitoring for self-management of chronic diseases (including obesity) are undisputed. Thus, if you have experience with the use of Fitbit either yourself or in your practice, I’d certainly be interested in your experience. @DrSharma Vancouver, BC
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