Yale's Rudd Center Unveils New Website

The Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University has launched a bold, freshly designed website offering in-depth information relating to food policy and obesity.

The Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University has launched a bold, freshly designed website offering in-depth information relating to food policy and obesity.

The new website highlights the Rudd Center’s past and present research initiatives; interactive features such as faculty podcasts, a monthly e-newsletter, “front burner news,” and extensive resources for policy makers, educators, researchers, and the public.

The debut also prominently features a new online educational and training package to increase awareness of weight bias among health care providers. The tool kit is called “Preventing Weight Bias: Helping Without Harming in Clinical Practice.” This free resource seeks to help health professionals become aware of weight bias and promote sensitivity toward overweight and obese patients in medical settings.

The online materials include handouts, fact sheets, PowerPoint presentations, articles, guided group discussions, and relevant scientific references—all addressing topics of weight bias as they apply to health care. Rebecca Puhl, director of Research and Anti-Stigma Initiatives at the Rudd Center, and a team of health care providers from Kaiser Permanente, developed the tool kit.

“Obese patients frequently face stigma from health care providers, which can jeopardize patients’ emotional and physical health,” Puhl said. “As the majority of Americans are now overweight or obese, this is an important clinical concern, one that no provider can afford to ignore.”

The tool kit is designed to improve the delivery of care in a variety of practice settings such as pediatrics, gynecology, and surgery. The information offers simple strategies to improve provider-patient communication and ways to make positive changes in the medical office environment. It also will challenge health professionals to examine their own biases toward overweight individuals.

“Disparities in care related to body weight, and frank bias against obese patients, are observed in most health care settings,” said Keith Bachman, M.D., of Kaiser Permanente’s Care Management Institute. “This tool kit is a terrific resource to help clinicians understand our own biases when caring for obese patients, and take actionable steps to provide better care by decreasing weight bias in clinical practice.”

For more information on weight bias you can download the toolkit free of charge.

The mission of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity is to improve the world’s diet, prevent obesity, and reduce weight stigma through creative connections between science and public policy, targeted research, frank dialogue among key constituents, and a commitment to real change. Please visit the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity for more information.



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