News
Eurobese at ISBNPA Meeting in Banff, Canada, May 21st – 24th, 2008
Ethics was put on the agenda of the Annual Meeting of The International Society For Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity as Inez de Beaufort was invited to give a keynote presentation on Ethics and health promotion and education. In her presentation entitled ‘WHOSE LIFESTYLE IS IT ANYWAY?’ she addressed some essential ethical topics in health promotion and obesity interventions.
Sofie Vandamme chaired a symposium entitled ‘The Scale Is The Limit?
Weighing Obesity Interventions From an Ethical Perspective.’ The symposium aimed at describing ethical issues identified in the practice of changing eating behavior and promoting physical activity. The participants of the symposium consisted of a multidisciplinary panel, i.c. Marieke ten Have and Sofie Vandamme from Rotterdam and Eurbese partner Pedro Teixeira from Portugal, Lea Maes, professor Public Health from the University of Ghent and Angus Dawson, Visiting Professor at the Centre for Ethics, University of Toronto, Canada.
We addressed questions that were relevant for research as well as for public health interventions. The following questions were discussed:
Why are ethical considerations necessary in behavioural health interventions?
How far can interventions go while being at the same time effective and ethically acceptable?
What are some of the most important ethical questions interventionists need to be mindful of when preventing/treating obesity?
The symposium contained two sections: one on ethical issues identified in particular intervention or prevention programs and one on the ethical arguments in the debate on overweight and obesity interventions. In this way, ethical issues identified in practice were confronted with more theoretical ethical and philosophical considerations.
Pedro Teixeira described the ethical issues he identified in physical activity and weight management programs. Lea Maes outlined some ethical concerns on changing eating behaviour in children. Sofie Vandamme presented a paper on ethical aspects of changing eating behaviour. Angus Dawson addressed the issue of autonomy and freedom in interventions of obesity. Finally, Marieke ten Have gave some ethical guidelines useful for intervening in lifestyle.
Our main argument was that lifestyle interventions should be ethically evaluated, considering the target group (children or adults), the severity of the problem (overweight or obesity classification), the type of intervention (exercise and/or diet), and the particular aim of the intervention (prevention or treatment).
The presentations were followed by a lively discussion on issues related to the implementation of ethical guidelines for the development of interventions, in particular overweight prevention and obesity treatment.
The reader has been sent to all participants of the Marrakesh workshop. A list of articles that had to be removed is available here.
Kelly Brownell is unable to join us in Marrakesh.
Jeffrey Steingarten,will join our Marrakesh conference. He, according to Wikipedia 'is an American lawyer and culinary critic/columnis'. He is the author of 'The man who ate everything ' and 'It must 've been something I ate'. See also: Jeffrey Steingarten - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Inez de Beaufort had the honour of giving the yearly Erasmus MC lecture 'Lof der Geneeskunde', titled 'XXL, ethische en medische aspecten van overgewicht'. For the text of her lecture and that of co-speaker Steve O' Rahilly see: www.Lof der Geneeskunst.nl