BHN Size Inclusive Health Promotion

Organisation / Service

Better Health Network

Better Health Network (BHN) is calling for health and wellbeing environments to adopt more size-inclusive practices to ensure everyone can access kind, supportive and equitable health care – rather than a non-inclusive approach that results in people actually disengaging from healthcare, nutritious eating and movement altogether.

Recent feedback from a BHN project confirms that people regularly experience shame and weight stigma and exclusion when public settings and health initiatives are not size inclusive.

BHN recently launched Towards Size-Inclusive Health Promotion, a resource developed to raise awareness and provide recommendations for size inclusive initiatives related to food and movement.

To develop this resource, the BHN Health Promotion team talked to people in larger bodies with our lived experience consultant Lisa Brassington, health promotion professionals across Victoria, and consulted with experts in the field, including Dr Fiona Willer (Director of Health, not Diets) and Dr Zali Yager (co-CEO of The Embrace Collective).

The Towards Size-Inclusive Health Promotion resource also raises awareness of the unintentional impacts that ‘healthy eating’ and ‘active living’ initiatives can have in the community.

To access the resources, please see the BHN website.

Gabrielle Orr, BHN's Health Promotion Practitioner, speaks more about this resource at our National Strategy Forum. Access the recording at www.nedc.com.au/implementation-forum

National Strategy Standards and Actions

Prevention

Standard 3: There is increased community capacity and expertise to prevent eating disorders through a ‘do no harm’ approach which acts to reduce risk and bolster protective factors.

Action 3.1: Eating disorder service development and lived experience organisations to partner with other sectors, industries, professional bodies and consumer groups to develop and disseminate training and supporting resources in eating disorder-safe principles for community, health and education professionals working with a diverse range of people and communities, and support their implementation.

Standard 6: Weight stigma is challenged and reduced, working towards elimination.

Action 6.4: Health promotion strategies and campaigns to orient their focus away from weight reduction or management, instead focusing on health-promoting behaviours.