The Peoples’ Obesity Justice Programme

The programme is co-developed by those who have been diagnosed with obesity alongside a wide range of health practitioners and researchers within Centric Lab. The programme has centred on exploring with people the multiple points of harm experienced from the medical system. As a result, the peers lead on a potential solution delivered at the grassroots level. Justice grants are then given to peers to work at the local level and report back on successes and failings.

The Young Lords, who were a group of Puerto Ricans advocating for health justice in Chicago. They identified tuberculosis as a disease of oppression, it came from Puerto Ricans forced to live in cramped accommodation, experiencing discrimination in healthcare settings, and not being able to access consistent healthcare. There are many diseases that fit this description, obesity, is one of them. Obesity is highly linked to communities who experience high levels of environmental stressors at home and work, shift work, malnourishment, childhood adverse experiences. These are all outcomes of poverty, which is a type of violence, meaning that obesity can also be identified as a response to trauma. 

Unfortunately, this framing of obesity is systemically missing from both social discourse and medicalised settings. It is mainly described, understood, and treated as a weight problem, rather than a complex disease that affects immune responses, mental health, and endocrine function. Moreover, it is not seen with a nuanced lens with the top-down systemic factors often ignored. 

We are moving towards five main goals 

1. Update the medical industry in the UK on the neuroendocrinology pathways of obesity for a more scientific perspective on the disease.

2. Update social discourse on the top down factors that contribute to obesity, which can support community health initiatives.  

3. End the language of shame and discrimination through a more accurate and scientific definition of obesity. 

4. Reframe obesity from an issue of weight to one of structural violence. 

5. Create a neuroendocrinological definition for obesity that not only is more accurate, but also supports the symptoms and signs reported by people experiencing the disease.

We are currently looking for medical practitioners, who would like to know more about a more accurate framing of obesity. Please get in touch with Charlotte via email charlotte@thecentriclab.com. 

We are also looking for communities that are experiencing high levels of obesity. We can set up virtual roundtables to explain the pamphlet and give support to those self-advocating within the UK medical environment.