Medicina Comunitária e Educação em Saúde

Abstrato

The Elephant in the (Class) Room: Campus Obesity

DeBoy JL

Historically, university administrators dismissed date rape, hazing, binge drinking, concussions, and plagiarism as mere “rites of passage”. In the past five years the academic community has made significant strides in publicly informing its student body about these specific issues that can derail student success in college. While successful interventions designed to limit their occurrence have been less than substantial, these topics have been openly discussed and policies/practices enacted…with one exception: campus obesity. Recent efforts to alert students with unhealthy body mass indices (BMI) have met a firestorm of off-campus criticisms that ultimately led to the affected university abandoning its proactive attempts in stemming the obesity epidemic. This paper will explore the reasons that underlie such resistance to obesity screening/disclosure and why such a mindset compounds this national health crisis.