About/Mission, Vision, & Principles

Mission, Vision, & Principles

Our Mission, Vision, and Principles are the commitments that guide everything AWSIM does, how we define evidence-based medicine, how we treat patients, and what we’re working to change. They reflect the collective thinking of our founding clinicians and continue to evolve as our community grows.

Mission

We are an international medical organization working to advance weight-inclusive care. We believe that when medicine focuses on body size rather than health, patients are harmed, and larger-bodied patients bear the burden of that harm. Through mentorship, education, and advocacy, AWSIM serves as the professional home for physicians who practice and learn weight-inclusive medicine.

Vision

We envision a world where patients of all sizes have access to empathetic, evidence-based healthcare, where body size is never a barrier to dignity, treatment, or belonging in the healthcare system.

Our Ten Principles of Inclusive Medicine

Developed collaboratively by AWSIM’s founding clinicians, these ten principles define what it means to practice medicine that is truly inclusive of all body sizes, grounding clinical care, research, and advocacy in evidence, equity, and patient dignity.

Principle 1

Access To Equal Care At Any Size

Everyone deserves equal access to high-quality, non-pathologizing, evidence-based medical care regardless of body size. Access to medical spaces, equipment, treatments, and procedures should not be limited by body size, weight, or a trial of weight loss.

Principle 2

Adequate Nourishment

Everyone, at any weight, deserves nourishment. Medical providers should recognize that food serves many purposes beyond nutrition, including satisfaction, social connection, and cultural expression. Providers without weight-inclusive nutrition training should refer to qualified dietitians or resources for any medically indicated diet counseling. Providers should be wary of dietary recommendations that restrict calories or food groups, as long-term data support intuitive eating. Medications whose main purpose is to decrease net calorie absorption contribute to malnutrition.

Principle 3

Body Size Diversity Is Natural

There has always been natural diversity in human bodies. The designation of “obesity” as a disease in and of itself is not supported by current evidence when analyzed with a non-biased, scientific, and long-term lens.

Principle 4

Patient Autonomy

Everyone deserves the right to choose which, if any, health behaviors or interventions they wish to prioritize at any given time, without judgment or limitation of care from their health care provider.

Principle 5

Informed Consent

It is the responsibility of the health care provider to provide the patient with unbiased informed consent when recommending treatment options. This is of particular importance when discussing interventions that intend to decrease a patient’s body weight.

Principle 6

Health and Body Size

Healthcare providers should not assume behaviors or health status based on a patient’s body size alone. Healthcare providers should, however, recognize that larger bodies have been marginalized in medicine, and take active steps to reduce, and where possible, reverse these harms – this includes both within direct patient care settings, and in medical education and research.

Principle 7

Weight Stigma and Weight Bias

Healthcare providers should recognize that weight stigma and weight bias are prevalent in both medicine and society, and that becoming a weight-inclusive practitioner requires critical reflection on internalized biases and beliefs.

Principle 8

Centering the experiences of the most marginalized

Weight-inclusive care benefits patients of all body sizes. However, the primary focus of our efforts to advance weight-inclusivity should prioritize the patients who experience the most harm and marginalization due to their body size and intersecting identities, including but not limited to race, sexual orientation, gender identity, socioeconomic status, and disability.

Principle 9

Body Liberation

AWSIM supports providers and patients in the pursuit of body liberation. This includes the right to live an empowered life in their current body, free of shame and stigma, and free from social and political systems of oppression that designate certain bodies as more worthy, healthy, and desirable than others.

Principle 10

Critical Analysis of Research

At the time of publication of these principles, there is no evidence supporting safe, sustainable, and long-term weight-reducing interventions that improve health outcomes. All clinicians, scientists, and researchers involved in weight-related research should design their studies, analyze their data, and create guidelines with the same scientific rigor applied to other areas of medicine and science. AWSIM will continue to review evidence that may challenge the statement above with a non-biased lens.