GOODY TWO SHOES: The Public Health Campaign Against People Of Color
For their decades-long effort to ban or vilify any pleasurable comestible, the nutrution police haven’t succeeded in making us any healthier. All these oppressive scolds have accomplished is to make women of color worldwide feel bad about themselves, reports The New York Times:
At a time when global health officials are stepping up efforts to treat obesity as a worrisome public health threat, some researchers are warning of a troubling side effect: growing stigma against fat people. …
“Of all the things we could be exporting to help people around the world, really negative body image and low self-esteem are not what we hope is going out with public health messaging,” said Alexandra Brewis, executive director of the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University.
Dr. Brewis and her colleagues recently completed a multicountry study intended to give a snapshot of the international zeitgeist about weight and body image. The findings were troubling, suggesting that negative perceptions about people who are overweight may soon become the cultural norm in some countries, including places where plumper, larger bodies traditionally have been viewed as attractive, according to a new report in the journal Current Anthropology. …
Using mostly in-person interviews, supplemented with questions posed over the Internet, they tested attitudes among 700 people in 10 countries, territories and cities, including American Samoa, Tanzania, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Paraguay, Argentina, New Zealand, Iceland, two sites in Arizona and London. …
[P]ublic health campaigns branding obesity as a disease are sometimes perceived as being critical of individuals rather than the environmental and social factors that lead to weight gain.
“A lot of the negative health messages have a lot of negative moral messages that go with them,” Dr. Brewis said. …
“I think the next big question is whether it’s going to create a lot of new suffering where suffering didn’t exist before,” Dr. Brewis said. “I think it’s important that we think about designing health messages around obesity that don’t exacerbate the problem.”
Meanwhile in AZ – which was one of locations included in the study – Gov.Jan Brewer (R) has proposed a $50 “fax tax” on enrollees in the state's overburdened Medicaid program who have ignored doctor’s orders to lose weight so as to manage a chronic medical condition that is exacerbated by obesity, reports The Wall Street Journal:
The plan, if approved by the Republican-dominated legislature, would mark the first time the state-federal health-care program for the poor has charged people for engaging in behavior deemed unhealthy.
Some companies have insurance surcharges for employees who smoke, but they aren't a staple of government-administered health programs. …
Ms. Brewer's surcharge would apply only to only certain childless adults: Those who are obese or chronically ill, and those who smoke. They would need to work with a primary-care physician to develop a plan to help them lose weight and otherwise improve their health. Patients who don't meet specified goals would be required to pay the $50, under terms of the proposal.
In Arizona, 25.5% of residents were obese as of 2009, according to figures from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ranking it about in the middle among states. About 46% of Arizona's Medicaid enrollees smoke daily, according to a 2006 survey by the state's Medicaid agency. …
Such a Medicaid fee typically would need authorization from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in Washington, and federal rules could prevent Arizona from enacting it. Mary Kahn, a spokeswoman for the agency, said no such levy has ever been approved.
Brewer plans to apply the revenue raised by the fat fee towards reinstating coverage for organ transplants, and to increase the number of childless adults who could apply for government-provided health coverage.
The Stiletto’s first reaction to the proposal was that it would make NYC’s Nanny/Mayor Mike Bloomberg jealous that he didn’t think of it first. But then he who pays the piper calls the tune, and someone who relies on the government to provide services and financial assistance shouldn’t be surprised that the trade-off is curtailment of personal freedom.
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