- Clinical and/or medical social workers who effectively practice cultural competency should be on the lookout for these maladaptive eating patterns in clients who are often in a marginalized position. Advocating on their behalf to medical professionals or for insurance purposes is crucial to getting potentially life-saving and life-altering treatment!
- HAES (Health at Every Size) model: Utilizing this Health at Every Size framework underlines the importance of a “…weight-inclusive, non-diet approach that promotes health and well-being for all regardless of one’s weight, size or shape” (Harris et al., 2019). Clinicians who use the HAES model recognize that disordered eating looks different for many BIPOC and LGBTQ+ individuals. The size of a body does not dictate how “sick” someone truly is, further breaking the stereotype of how EDs appear (ex. extremely thin, white women).
- Grand Challenges of Social Work: One of the many Grand Challenges of Social Work outlined is “Closing the Health Gap”. Closing the Health Gap is focused on not only making health-care readily accessible, but breaking medical discrimination and neglect of BIPOC people that has been insidiously occurring for centuries. Eating disorders negatively impact the social, psychological, and biological inner workings of survivors (American Psychiatric Association), making this a systemic medical issue that must be addressed, as vulnerable populations do not get acknowledgment for these disorders to begin with. One policy recommendation that the Grand Challenges of Social Work states is “…expanding, through community-enhanced research, the evidence-based set of culturally grounded preventive interventions for physical, [and] mental-health…” (Spencer et al., 2016).
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