Fisch Claudia, Whelan John, Evans Sheridan, Whitaker Liza-Ann, Gajjar Swapnil, Ali Lamiaa, Fugate Colony, Puhl Rebecca, Hartwell Micah
Office of Medical Student Research, Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences, Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA.
Office of Medical Student Research, Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences at Cherokee Nation, Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA.
Pediatr Obes. 2022 May;17(5):e12879. doi: 10.1111/ijpo.12879. Epub 2021 Dec 20.
Stigma towards children with obesity can begin as early as 3 years old, leading to increased risk for poorer mental health outcomes and lower quality of life. This includes discriminatory language used by peers and adults, which may be compounded by use within the medical community and in published research.
Our primary objective was to investigate adherence to person-centred language (PCL) in childhood obesity-related medical publications.
We searched PubMed for childhood obesity-related articles from 2018 through 2020, from journals frequently publishing childhood-obesity-related research. Articles were randomized and searched for a list of predetermined, stigmatizing terms.
Of the sample of 300 articles, only 21.7% were adherent to PCL guidelines. The most frequent labels found were 'obese' appearing in 70.33% of articles and 'overweight' in 63.7%. Labels such as 'chubby', 'large', and 'fat' were less common, but still appeared in the medical literature.
A majority of childhood obesity-related articles did not adhere to PCL guidelines. Given the negative effects of stigma among children with obesity, it is imperative to advocate for PCL use within the medical community. Increased stringency by journal editors and publishers may be the next step in this process.
对肥胖儿童的污名化最早可能在3岁时就开始了，这会导致心理健康状况较差和生活质量较低的风险增加。这包括同龄人和成年人使用的歧视性语言，而医学界和已发表的研究中使用此类语言可能会使情况更加复杂。
我们的主要目的是调查儿童肥胖相关医学出版物中对以患者为中心的语言（PCL）的遵循情况。
我们在PubMed中搜索了2018年至2020年期间经常发表儿童肥胖相关研究的期刊上的儿童肥胖相关文章。文章被随机选取，并搜索了一系列预先确定的污名化术语。
在300篇文章的样本中，只有21.7%遵循了PCL指南。最常出现的标签是“肥胖的”，出现在70.33%的文章中，“超重的”出现在63.7%的文章中。“胖乎乎的”“体型大的”和“胖的”等标签不太常见，但仍出现在医学文献中。
大多数儿童肥胖相关文章未遵循PCL指南。鉴于污名化对肥胖儿童的负面影响，在医学界倡导使用PCL势在必行。期刊编辑和出版商提高严格程度可能是这一过程的下一步。
