Welcome to the survey! We will create a set of Best Practices for the Care of Higher-Weight People!

This is a grass-roots effort to improve the healthcare system for higher-weight people of every community. My name is Deb Burgard and I am a psychologist and activist interested in improving healthcare. My hope is that the ideas we generate here will culminate in a set of guidelines that all providers of healthcare will use as instructions in culturally competent care that is free of weight bias and discrimination, as well as specifically knowledgeable about the kinds of medical, psychological, economic, social, and cultural issues faced by people of higher weight.

Why only higher weight people? Doesn't weight stereotyping affect the medical care of people who are at lower weights too? Yes, it absolutely does, and this set of guidelines is part of a larger project of removing weight bias from medical care entirely! However, under the circumstances where "obesity" has been declared a disease by the American Medical Association, and "evidence-based guidelines" are hardening the procedures healthcare providers follow to "treat obesity," we need a specific set of alternate guidelines that protect higher weight people and are informed by their specific medical needs.
We would like your input. Your contributions are anonymous and you may go back to previous questions in a single visit to the survey, as well as returning after exiting/saving the survey to add more ideas by using the original link, while the survey remains up.

So, how can we improve healthcare for higher-weight people? There are many aspects to improving care, and we would like you to think broadly and creatively, and to use your own experience or that of loved ones, or those of other higher-weight people, to imagine what would make healthcare - both physical and psychological - competent, accessible, and free of weight bias and stigma. Feel free to suggest not just ideas about how to improve care once you have it, but also, how to improve access to care in the first place.
Take a moment to think about your own experience or that of loved ones or those of other higher-weight people. What are some of the most troubling, as well as the most helpful, aspects of those experiences with the healthcare system? What suggestions might you make on the basis of those experiences?

Question Title

* 1. What would you include in a set of best practice guidelines for higher-weight people?

Question Title

* 2. Can you think of anything else that should be part of a set of best practice guidelines?

Question Title

* 3. How should health care change so that higher-weight people with intersecting identities (experiences related to age, disability, medical or psychological conditions, indigenous heritage, national origin, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender expression, social class, immigration status, and other social identities) are well-served?

Question Title

* 4. Which of these intersecting identities are part of your own lived experience (experiences related to age, disability, medical or psychological conditions, indigenous heritage, national origin, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender expression, social class, immigration status, and other social identities)?

Question Title

* 5. Do you consider yourself to be a higher-weight person?

Question Title

* 6. Are you a provider of healthcare?

T