NAAFA is asking that everyone who is concerned by the Center of Disease Control’s decision to launch their web site “Leanworks” featuring an “obesity cost calculator for employers” to join with NAAFA in our protest by clicking on this link and signing the petition to stamp out size discrimination: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/sizediscrimination/index.html

There is no cost involved in signing this petition and it will only take a moment of your time.  Help us send a strong message to the CDC that any policy and practice that would legitimize any form of discrimination is not acceptable.  There is strength in numbers.  Please sign the petition today.

I signed this petition a while ago and am in the process of connecting with some people I know at the CDC to discuss the program with them. So far my remarks have received a shocked and concerned reaction with promises (from people I trust) of further investigation of the program (since this person is not in that department) and additional conversations with me about what can be done about this. Though I’m not holding out hopes of getting the website torn down any time soon, I am working on alerting people in the organization to the damaging and discriminatory effects it is having.

That’s fantastic, Jay.  Please keep us posted of your progress.  We will probably be copying the petition soon to send with a letter from NAAFA about the billboards.  Is there someone special that you are aware of to whom we should be directing or at least copying our appeal?

I’ll definitely keep you up to date on how it goes (though I fear a very slow turn-around of information), but for the sake of allowing others to do their own research, I don’t have a name to direct grievances towards - other than Dr. William Dietz, director of the CDC’s Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity, of course. As far as I’m concerned, flood that man with grievances and protestations. That said, I have definitely passed on both NAAFA and ASDAH’s statements against LEAN Works! to people at the CDC, and I’ve shared the NAAFA Petition. Whatever else I get I am most definitely passing along to show people at the CDC that there is a large and just public outcry against LEAN Works! and other strictly weight-based (and BMI-based, ugh!) health programs.

In the meantime, I’ll share this Newsweek article in which Dietz continues to defend his discriminatory program.