New tactic to curb obesity: Address physician bias
Drawing a parallel to the medical community's approach to common mental illnesses, researchers suggest that shifting physicians' perspective from individual responsibility to a treatable condition may finally slow decades of rising obesity rates. "We know there are economic, cultural, political and environmental elements causing this problem, yet our approach to treatment puts sole responsibility on the patient's behavior," says Michael Clearfield, DO, Dean of Touro University's College of Osteopathic Medicine. "It's not unlike the way we treated depression 40 years ago. Only, instead of telling people to 'get over it', we say, 'just eat right and exercise.'" The curriculum, which launched in 2012, measures medical students' attitudes on the Fat Phobia Scale, which identifies biased beliefs in stereotypes , such as obese people are "lazy" and have "poor self-control." The students then received instr...