About the Fat Friendly Health Professionals Lists

This is a list of some health professionals that some fat people have deemed fat friendly or who declared themselves fat friendly, and some other web sites listing fat friendly health professionals. The list is arranged alphabetically by country, state, and city. One person has also offered to give info by email.

How to contribute to this list

If you know of (or are) a fat friendly medical professional, please send the following to recommend@fatfriendlydocs.com. Use the subject line "FFP submission". Note: It's probably polite to ask your doctor whether it's OK to recommend him/her.

If you know of a medical professional who is NOT fat friendly, please send the information above along with an explanation of your opinion. I will not have a list of fat unfriendly professionals (I don't wanna be sued!) but if someone has listed the same person as fat friendly, I will include dissenting comments in his or her listing.

What is fat friendly?

These recommendations are ideals. Some professionals and offices may not follow them all, but their fat patients may still consider them overall fat friendly. The bottom line is whether the professional preaches weight loss if you have stated that is not an option for you.

A fat friendly professional does not necessarily avoid mentioning a client's weight, but he or she avoids making an issue of it, avoids lectures and humiliation, and respects the client's wishes with regard to weight discussions.

If a client asks not to be weighed, the request is acknowledged without complaint and taken into account automatically on future visits. (Note: there are a few cases where weighing is necessary, for example, when administering certain medications, chemotherapy, or anesthesia.)

If weight sometimes contributes to a problem, the professional may mention this, but also considers other diagnoses and recommends tests to determine the actual diagnosis if appropriate. If weight loss is a recommended treatment for a problem, the fat friendly professional may mention this, but at minimum will also recommend and prescribe other treatments. A fat friendly professional accepts a client's wish not to use weight loss as a treatment.

Ideally, the professional's office has available armless chairs, large blood pressure cuffs, large examination gowns, and other equipment suitable for fat people. If not, the office acknowledges the importance of such items when told.

Some fat friendly professionals believe that fat is not unhealthy. Others may believe that fat is unhealthy, but may acknowledge that weight loss doesn't work or is dangerous and/or that the client has a right to direct his or her own treatment.

In the News/On the Web

"Larger Patients: In Search of Fewer Lectures, Better Health Care"
This edition of the newsletter The Prepared Patient (Vol 1, Issue 9, July 2008) by the Center for the Advancement of Health describes the difficulties large people have in accessing care and gives some tips for overcoming what Hanne Blank calls "fat distraction." It mentions this list.
The weight of obesity: Linking large people to care
This American Medical News article interviews Mara Nesbitt, who contributed an article to this web site about how to choose a fat-friendly doctor. It also mentions this site.

Back to the Fat Friendly Health Professionals page
Last updated: June 2011
Created by: Stef
No unsolicited commercial email.
Copyright 1997-2011 Stef Jones