{"id":1590,"date":"2010-04-08T09:13:08","date_gmt":"2010-04-08T15:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/crawler\/?p=1590"},"modified":"2010-04-08T09:13:47","modified_gmt":"2010-04-08T15:13:47","slug":"weighting-for-health-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2010\/04\/08\/weighting-for-health-care\/","title":{"rendered":"weighting for health care?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"img-link\" title=\"Creative Commons licensed photo by diekatrin on flickr.com\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/26242865@N04\/4299076938\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" style=\"border: 0pt none;margin: 15px\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4066\/4299076938_987c7edacc_m.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Littmann\" width=\"160\" height=\"240\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/news\/health\/weightloss\/2010-04-07-treatingobese07_ST_N.htm\">USA Today<\/a> reports on a new study examining whether people who are overweight receive less care from their doctors.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Previous research has shown that some physicians find it awkward to work with obese patients and have low expectations for success. And heavy patients have reported feeling that doctors are biased and disrespectful because of their extra weight. To examine whether such attitudes translate into differences in actual practice, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center evaluated the medical care of nearly 70,000 patients. They were Medicare beneficiaries or received care from Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals.<\/p>\n<p>The scientists compared how likely heavy and normal-weight people were to meet standard guidelines for preventive care, including diabetes care (eye exams, sugar and cholesterol testing), flu vaccines, pneumonia vaccines and screenings for breast, colorectal and cervical cancers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Results showed that people in the study who were overweight or obese were just as, if not more, likely to receive preventative care from their doctors as people of normal weight.<\/p>\n<p>The study&#8217;s lead investigator, who holds an MD and a PhD in sociology, comments:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Physicians appear to be doing a good job at preventive care, despite  surveys suggesting that physicians have negative attitudes toward  obesity and patients&#8217; perceptions that their doctors are biased,&#8221; says  lead author Virginia Chang, an assistant professor of medicine and  sociology at the University  of Pennsylvania&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s important to ensure that obese patients are getting equitable preventive care, as these services can save lives and reduce costs down the road,&#8221; Chang says.<\/p>\n<p>Still, questions remain. &#8220;Our findings do not address patients&#8217; satisfaction with their care,&#8221; she says. &#8220;And these findings may not be true of younger populations where the stigma of obesity may be greater.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>USA Today reports on a new study examining whether people who are overweight receive less care from their doctors. Previous research has shown that some physicians find it awkward to work with obese patients and have low expectations for success. And heavy patients have reported feeling that doctors are biased and disrespectful because of their [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":335,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[39113,39110,152],"class_list":["post-1590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-health","tag-inequality","tag-medical"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/335"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1590"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1593,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1590\/revisions\/1593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}