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CNN Live Today

'Daily Dose'

Aired October 02, 2003 - 11:41   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: People who are overweight can face discrimination from society, but a recent study say health care professionals, even those who specialize in treating obesity, are often biased against obese people.
Our medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen is here with details in our "Daily Dose" of health news.

Hello.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Hello.

This is actually quite surprising, Daryn. These are doctors, nurses, dietitians, people who are supposed to be especially sympathetic to patients in their predicaments. Well, some researchers at Yale put together a bunch of different studies. They looked at studies that were done over time, and what they found was surprising, that some of these doctors, and dietitians and nurses, many of them, in fact, had a real by bias against overweight people, in fact, were really kind of reluctant to treatment.

Let's go over what these studies found. The studies found that many of these health care workers said that these overweight folks were lazy, stupid and worthless. Those were some of the adjectives that they ascribed to them. This is in addition to other things like, they said that overweight people had poor hygiene. They associated them with dishonesty more often. In fact, some of them even said that they were repulsed by overweight people. Again, these are health care workers who were saying this.

And of course, there are many, many overweight people in this country, so this is a big problem. There are 127 million overweight people in the United States, 60 million of them are actually obese, and 9 million of them are severely obese.

So, of course, people who specialize in this area want to start doing something about this, because obviously, that could be a huge problem.

KAGAN: Right. You might have been surprised, but I'm sure there are a lot of people who face this in their daily lives that find bias clear across the board. They're probably not surprised, but they're also wondering, what they can do if they do find that they're picking up this bias with their health care workers.

COHEN: There's a couple of different things they can do. First of all, like anybody, you can interview a health care worker before you actually go to them. If you have to go to the emergency room, you can't do that. But you can interview your internist, you can interview your endocrinologist, and sort of get a feeling about how they might feel about overweight people.

Also there's a group called the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination, which is a group of overweight people who've gotten together, and they have a wonderful Web site that describes exactly what you can do and the kinds of questions you can ask, and gives guidelines for how to choose a health care practitioner.

KAGAN: Overweight or not, you need to be proactive in picking out who's going to be your health care provider, bottom line.

COHEN: Absolutely.

KAGAN: Elizabeth, thank you for that.

COHEN: Thanks.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com






Aired October 2, 2003 - 11:41   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: People who are overweight can face discrimination from society, but a recent study say health care professionals, even those who specialize in treating obesity, are often biased against obese people.
Our medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen is here with details in our "Daily Dose" of health news.

Hello.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Hello.

This is actually quite surprising, Daryn. These are doctors, nurses, dietitians, people who are supposed to be especially sympathetic to patients in their predicaments. Well, some researchers at Yale put together a bunch of different studies. They looked at studies that were done over time, and what they found was surprising, that some of these doctors, and dietitians and nurses, many of them, in fact, had a real by bias against overweight people, in fact, were really kind of reluctant to treatment.

Let's go over what these studies found. The studies found that many of these health care workers said that these overweight folks were lazy, stupid and worthless. Those were some of the adjectives that they ascribed to them. This is in addition to other things like, they said that overweight people had poor hygiene. They associated them with dishonesty more often. In fact, some of them even said that they were repulsed by overweight people. Again, these are health care workers who were saying this.

And of course, there are many, many overweight people in this country, so this is a big problem. There are 127 million overweight people in the United States, 60 million of them are actually obese, and 9 million of them are severely obese.

So, of course, people who specialize in this area want to start doing something about this, because obviously, that could be a huge problem.

KAGAN: Right. You might have been surprised, but I'm sure there are a lot of people who face this in their daily lives that find bias clear across the board. They're probably not surprised, but they're also wondering, what they can do if they do find that they're picking up this bias with their health care workers.

COHEN: There's a couple of different things they can do. First of all, like anybody, you can interview a health care worker before you actually go to them. If you have to go to the emergency room, you can't do that. But you can interview your internist, you can interview your endocrinologist, and sort of get a feeling about how they might feel about overweight people.

Also there's a group called the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination, which is a group of overweight people who've gotten together, and they have a wonderful Web site that describes exactly what you can do and the kinds of questions you can ask, and gives guidelines for how to choose a health care practitioner.

KAGAN: Overweight or not, you need to be proactive in picking out who's going to be your health care provider, bottom line.

COHEN: Absolutely.

KAGAN: Elizabeth, thank you for that.

COHEN: Thanks.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com