Applying an Intersectional Perspective to Obesity Prevention: A Critical Matrix

Introduction The obesity rate increases globally. Preventive public health interventions are a prominent way of tackling its challenges. However, aspects of diversity are rarely considered in these interventions. In particular, this holds for intersections of categories such as age, gender, class, and ethnicity.

Methods We will systematically epitomize previous communicative attempts to prevent high body weight by using (a) content analysis methods and (b) intersectionality as method to detect possible multidimensional discriminations.

Results Weight communication is often expert-driven, detached from the experiences of affected persons. It needs to be analyzed from a perspective which investigates how social categories intersect and how these intersections should influence future communication endeavors. This is ethically justified in the light of social and distributive justice.

Conclusion The critical matrix of obesity interventions takes three points of view: (i) Studies showing that health interventions are inefficient discuss that they may have no substantial consequences because they cannot sufficiently motivate people. Thus, some experts find paternalistic and coercive strategies more legitimate. (ii) Researchers that strive for social change are the most critical of obesity interventions because, they argue, people’s body weight is not the central problem, but rather society’s devaluation of it. Instead of framing obesity as a disease, society reduce structural discriminations due to body weight. (iii) From the perspective of different needs, interventions do not fully meet the diverse needs of people with high body weight. Other strategies such as personal nutritional counseling, psychotherapy, weight-reduction programs, or even bariatric surgery seem to be more promising.

Publication History

Article published online:
02 September 2021