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Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford on ’60 Minutes’: Many doctors are biased against obese patients
“Doctors do not understand obesity."
Obese patients may have a harder time being taken seriously by their doctor, according to one local expert.
Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, a multi-hyphenate obesity medicine physician who works at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, appeared on 60 Minutes Jan. 1 to discuss the condition, which she refers to as a “brain disease.”
Stanford cited a study that found that 79 to 90% of physicians in the United States have significant bias towards individuals that are heavier. She added that some doctors may not recognize their bias towards obese patients.
“Now doctors listening to me may say, oh, it’s not me. Hold your horses,” Stanford told 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl. “Has that patient come to you and told you ‘Look, Doc, I’m eating well. Look, Doc, I’m exercising,’ and the doc says to them, ‘Are you sure? I don’t believe that.’”
Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford
In one of her published studies, Dr. Stanford found that most medical schools don’t teach that obesity is a disease. Some don’t even offer courses on it, she said, although obesity is the second leading cause of preventable death in the country.
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“Doctors do not understand obesity,” Stanford said.
The 60 Minutes segment also featured Dr. Caroline Apovian, co-director of the weight management and wellness Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Apovian and Stanford advise companies that develop medications for obesity. But thanks to the drugs’ weight loss capabilities, they are coveted by those who can pay top dollar for them, and undercovered by insurance companies.
“We have a national shortage on these medications. If those that have the means are able to get them yet the people that really need them are unable to. Then that creates a greater disparity, right? The haves and the have-nots,” Stanford said.
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Apovian said that the lack of access to these medications “frustrates [doctors] every single day.”
“We see patients who desperately need to lose weight … and we can’t give them this fabulous, robust medication that is very effective and safe because insurance won’t cover it,” she said.
Apovian added that insurance denials often state that doctors should counsel their patients on “behavior change.”
“That’s where the stigma of obesity comes in, the idea that the patient can do it with diet and exercise. You would never do that to a patient with hypertension or heart disease or Type 2 diabetes, tell them that you “Just don’t eat sugar, you’ll be fine.”
Apovian said that along with health issues, obese patients suffer from feelings of shame as a result of their treatment.
“Don’t you think if people walking down the street with obesity, stigmatized as they are, shunned — don’t you think if they could lose weight and keep it off, they would?”
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