Abstracts Health Sciences

Gordofobia faz mal à saúde: relatos de gordofobia nos serviços de saúde e precarização do cuidado em saúde das pessoas gordas

by Marina Bastos Paim

Abstract: Fatphobia is ingrained in our conception of the body, constituting limitations, guilt and the exclusion of fat people. Many studies prove the existence of stigma and negative attitudes towards fat people in health services, but there is a lack of national productions on this topic. Stigma, prejudice and discrimination should be considered objects of concern for Public Health in order to guarantee equity in access to health services. Therefore, this work aims to characterize how fatphobia occurs in health services; recognize and analyze the consequences of fatphobia in the care and health of the fat person; to problematize fatphobia in the field of public health and to alert to the need to develop fatphobia prevention strategies in health services. This work is based on feminist epistemologies and aims to articulate the academy with social struggles. It is an exploratory-descriptive and qualitative work, for data collection, an online questionnaire was used, which was disseminated to fat people or person who is no longer fat and obtained 515 valid responses. There was participation of people from all over Brazil, but with greater prominence from the Southeast region, the vast majority of participants were cis and white women. Quantitative data were presented descriptively based on frequency measures and for qualitative data an interpretative analysis was carried out, based on thematic analysis. The results address the following discussions: characterization of the participants; medicalization of obesity; characterization of fatphobia in health services; reports of fatphobia in health services; conceptualizing the term medical fatphobia; consequences of fatphobia in the care and health of the fat person; fatphobia flowchart in health services; Fatphobia prevention strategies in health. This study concluded that even if the health area is reluctant to discuss fatphobia, it is urgent to recognize that medical fatphobia exists and is harmful to the health of fat people. In other words, fatphobia is a public health problem and it is up to the health sector to prevent its reproduction.