Live webinar air date: July 20, 2026, 1 p.m., Eastern time
Date
CE credits
2
Exam items
15
Description
COVID-19 changed the landscape for psychologists who help clients prevent or manage chronic diseases like cardiovascular disease and diabetes, and yet many clinicians are still emphasizing no-longer-current behavioral interventions, such as weight loss, to prevent and manage disease. This webinar offers updated information about chronic disease risk factors, prevention behaviors, and outcomes after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and will help psychologists apply and modify fat-acceptance wellness approaches to target chronic disease, improve client physical health, and advocate for clients who face weight stigma and chronic disease stigma in health care and non-health-care contexts.
Learning objectives
- Describe the history and post-COVID-19 status of behavioral health in the United States, including major changes in both infectious and chronic disease incidence and intervention.
- Discuss how major changes in infectious and chronic diseases incidence and intervention were affected by cultural beliefs about weight stigma.
- Critique recommendations to lose weight for chronic disease management and choose alternative effective systemic and behavioral interventions.
- Apply and modify fat-acceptance wellness approaches to target chronic disease, improve client physical health, and advocate for clients who face fat stigma and chronic disease stigma in health care and non-health-care contexts.
Presenter
Margit I. Berman, PhD
Associate professor in the Graduate School of Professional Psychology at the University of Saint Thomas and assistant professor of psychiatry at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. She is the author of A Clinician’s Guide to Acceptance-Based Approaches for Weight Concerns: The Accept Yourself! Framework (Routledge, 2018) and A Workbook of Acceptance-Based Approaches for Weight Concerns: The Accept Yourself! Framework (Routledge, 2018).
