Conference Brings Together Researchers and Professionals
With great enthusiasm, the National Center for Obesity, Council for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, and the Centre for Childhood Health were able to present several speakers and ongoing projects on weight stigmatization last week.
The cause of the conference was a report on weight stigmatization from earlier this year, which, among other things, shows that children as young as preschool age choose not to play with peers who have higher weight. Sabrina Due Grandt from Sex & Society who attended the conference was surprised by the findings of the report:
"I was really surprised that even children as young as 3-5 years old already associate higher weight with negative thoughts."
Stigma on the Agenda
Sara Bach Nielsen was glad to see so many adults gathered under one roof, all interested in ensuring the health and well-being of children and young people. She is a board member of Danish School Students and traveled all the way from Kolding to observe the adults' work and to highlight that students in schools would like weight stigmatization to be included in general education.
This is something that has been worked on at Brobyskolerne. Here, students have tolerance and well-being as part of their curriculum.
School leader Tine Sjørup has been involved in that decision. With this curriculum change, she hopes to create an open space for the students - one where even difficult topics can be discussed. Tine Sjørup acknowledges that it can both be a protective factor and a risk factor when students are expected to deal with weight stigmatization.
Watch Sabrine, Sara and Tine in the video below
