Practitioners and consumers are coming together to change the way we talk about overweight and obesity, writes Clare Mullen.
The new year is a time when we wade through articles in the popular media about “shedding holiday kilos” and “getting beach ready.”
They may seem harmless, but in fact diet culture and body shaming cause real health harm. That’s why it’s great that we’re seeing signs of a revolution whereby people with lived experience are involved in discussions about weight issues and obesity.
I have often observed that having a consumer and lived experience perspective in the room when health service plans are being developed, or health topics are being discussed at conferences, changes the nature of the discussion.
We need to move away from the idea that it’s OK to have just a handful of people with consumer, carer or lived experience perspectives in a room when there are hundreds of other people with professional or learned experience perspectives.
I’m convinced that consumer perspectives should be at every table where decisions that impact us are being made – this includes at the highest levels of government, for example, when health service funding models are being conceived and developed.
This means organisations need to step up their level of investment in capacity building for people with consumer, carer or lived experience perspectives to become “learned experience” experts – particularly in technical areas – while retaining a consumer, carer or lived experience lens.
In the discussions I have had the privilege of being a part of through my job, I feel a responsibility to speak consumer and lived experience perspectives into the room.
There is currently no democratic forum in Australia where consumers, carers, and community members can hold our elected representatives to account for the state of our health and social care system.
We are required to talk to our State representatives on State-funded issues and our Federal representatives on Commonwealth-funded issues. This is a massive contributor to the ongoing tolerance of a highly fragmented health and social care system.
It is essential that consumer and lived experience perspectives are present at every discussion that impacts our health and social wellbeing – so that people can move away from “meh, what are you going to do?” to “right, what are we going to do!”.
With discussions ongoing in multiple forums in both WA and federally to address issues of great importance to the community – such as the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce and the WA Emergency Department Reform Ministerial Taskforce, perhaps it’s time for a forum where WA consumers and health professionals can sit together with elected representatives and officials from both levels of government to nut out the best solutions for WA – together.
ED: Clare Mullen is Deputy Director of the Health Consumers’ Council WA.