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- Convenors:
-
Emily Henderson
(Durham University)
Kàtia Lurbe i Puerto (AP HP)
- Location:
- JUB-155
- Start time:
- 9 September, 2015 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
As our world becomes ever more globalised, the complexity of addressing obesity-related public health concerns increases. We invite papers that rethink common understandings of obesity, and examine public action and community engagement within a global health context.
Long Abstract:
As our world becomes ever more globalised, the complexity of addressing obesity-related public health concerns increases. Global governance is heavy influenced by billionaires such as the Gates and transnational corporations such as Pepsico. A handful of corporations supply much of the world's food and are ever more challenging to regulate. In such contexts, to what extent are 'health discourses' thwarted or misappropriated by market forces? How do health policies become biased and limited in favour of profit? Why is it, despite evidence that obesities are heavily determined by environmental, social, political and economic factors, governmental responses tend to 'drift' back to individual focused behaviour change (known as 'lifestyle drift')? How can action on global issues be taken at the local level (the idea of a 'glocal' world)? How do local contexts redefine both the meaning of obesity and global policies? What roles are patient, citizen and community groups playing? Whilst funds are increasingly sourced from food companies, how can researchers on obesity produce independent research? How can we challenge the ever widening gaps in global health inequalities? To what extent can our research influence policy and practice?
Building on the 'Bodies out of bounds' panel at the 2014 EASA/AAA conference, this panel invites papers that further this thinking into public action and community engagement within current global contexts.
This panel also seeks to provide a platform for identifying future networks across European academic institutions and to discuss potential anthropological research on obesity and food/health related practices.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Lina Cristina Casadó Marín (Medical Anthropology Research Centre) Mabel Gracia-Arnaiz (Universitat Rovira i Virgili)
Paper short abstract:
This article raises the question of whether the limited importance given Spanish public health policies to macro/micro structural factors and to social determinants of health that account for the unequal social distribution of obesity may be the cause of the apparent failure to reduce its incidence.
Paper long abstract:
Taking as its point of departure the WHO's warning at the beginning of the 21st century about the challenges posed by the global obesity epidemic, this article analyzes the principal strategies in Spain for combating what is understood as a serious public health problem that occasions enormous health care expenditures.
Locating the principal causes in processes of modernization, the Spanish health authorities have adopted measures during the past decade that show, at least on paper, that the state has tried to position itself as sociomedical regulator of healthy lifestyles at the same time that it extends responsibility to other social sectors such as the food and restaurant industries and local administrations. In practice, however, most efforts are directed to the general public and are based almost exclusively on nutritional education and public awareness campaigns about healthy eating. These strategies reduce costs in a crisis times, but judging by the continuing increase in obesity over the past five years, they are also less than effective. State interventions in social sectors that have helped to create and perpetuate an "obesogenic environment" are limited to the purely cosmetic, such as nutritional labeling and portion size, and rely heavily on medicalization, stressing the individual's responsibility for dietary regulation and weight reduction, and lifestyle change through regular exercise.
This article raises the question of whether the limited importance given in public health policies to micro/macro structural factors and to social determinants of health may be the cause of the apparent failure to reduce its incidence
Emily Henderson (Durham University)
Paper short abstract:
Despite progress in thinking of obesity as being caused by wider determinants, policy in the UK tends to ‘drift’ back to changing individual lifestyles. How can we truly move beyond responsibilising and stigmatising individuals, but rather foster public action and hold government to account?
Paper long abstract:
Historically, public health approaches to reduce obesity have been in the form of media campaigns and educational interventions on diet and physical activity. In 2007, the landmark Foresight Report was published in the UK, which presented the Obesity System Map describing the factors evidenced to cause obesity and their interrelationships. The model advanced thinking about obesity simply as an energy imbalance, by not only brining to the fore the complexities of obesity but served as useful starting point for developing approaches from a whole systems perspective. Specifically, it identified factors across society, from the more individual biological and psychological factors to the distal social and infrastructural influences, with emphasis placed on the wider determinants of health and inequalities. Despite this progress, the tendency in the UK is to 'drift' back to changing lifestyles, by continuing to approach obesity with downstream, micro-level behaviour change initiatives. For example, the most recent UK government installed as one of its major efforts to address obesity the Behavioural Insights Unit, which was originally a cabinet unit but now functions as a private enterprise that advises other governments and their agencies. This paper reviews such approaches from 2007 onward in the UK, interrogates the rationales provided and attempts to understand how the seeming tension between neoliberal and social justice approaches roadblocks progress. Finally this paper asks, how can we truly move beyond responsibilising and stigmatising individuals, but rather foster public action and hold government to account.
Kàtia Lurbe i Puerto (AP HP)
Paper short abstract:
Drawing from a critical deconstructionist review of the PNNS and PO, I discuss the "diagnostic narratives" underlying French public policies on obesity. I then analyze the rationales of the latest instruments for the regulation of individual behaviour and debate their scope for citizenship action.
Paper long abstract:
France launched in 2001 its 1st National Nutrition and Health Program (PNNS1 2001-2006), in which the regulation of food consumption and eating habits became defined as a public health concern. Whilst its antecessor singled out children as an at-risk population for obesity, PNNS2 (2006-2010) started addressing obesity as a national public health problem. Namely it introduced obesity as a shared problem that transcends specific groups and threatens the whole nation. Obesity Plan (PO 2009-2013) reinforced this idea of the French nation being affected as a collective subject by the so-called global epidemic and brought in the policy agenda the need for actions. The current PNNS3 (2011-2015) officially recognizes obesity as a multifactorial chronic illness that tends to worsen over time. But when it comes to the public actions to tackle it, it follows in the step with the lifestyle drift-based social engineering approach. Drawing from a critical deconstructionist review of the different PNNS and the PO, this paper discusses the "diagnostic narratives" underlying French public policies on obesity. It then focuses on the two policy instruments that are being implemented to regulate individuals' behaviour: i.e., the simplified nutritional food labelling and the patient education programs lead by "patient-experts". What are the rationales behind these two micro-level behaviour change devices? To what extent can they be understood as leading to consumer/patient empowerment? What are the roles played (or that can be played) by consumers and/or obese people (both patients and non-patients) organizations to foster community action?
Agnieszka Maj (Warsaw University of Life Sciences)
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores awareness of factors which can lead to obesity among research participants from Poland. The main focus is on indicating how it is shaped by the interplay of factors form both the local and the global level and what barriers can make obesity prevention difficult for certain groups of people
Paper long abstract:
According to recent surveys, over a half of population of the Poles is either overweight or suffers from obesity and the number is growing. In my paper I would like to investigate the interplay between the 'global' and the 'local' factors which take part in shaping social awareness of obesity in Poland. I am going to refer to several examples. First of all, I will focus on changing patterns of food consumption and dieting in Poland. Secondly, I will explore the input of obesity prevention campaigns initiated by various entities: the governmental institutions, non-governmental institutions, companies producing food and providing dietary products. Finally, I will refer to the results of the research study which I conducted with a group of research participants from Poland. The study was aimed at exploring the awareness of factors leading to obesity among the research participants, their personal attitudes to obesity and experiences concerning obesity ( such as being overweight, having overweight friends or family members etc.) as well as their perception of any possible barriers, which make it difficult for them to comply with those rules of obesity prevention, which they would like to follow.