Obesidade, acessibilidade e transporte público: o estigma da Gordofobia e os impactos na Mobilidade Urbana e no acesso aos Serviços Especializados de Saúde

Abstract

Obesity as a multifactorial disease is considered epidemic and of worldwide incidence by the World Health Organization. People with obesity face several daily challenges, especially stigmas arising from body appearance. These stigmas are manifested in different ways and in different spaces, particularly we focus on the use of the urban public transport by bus, as it is the most used means of public transport by the general population. The main objective of the research was to characterize the expressions of fatphobia in public transport, debating the accessibility and urban mobility of obese people and its impacts on their quality of life and specialized health care. Our motivation arose during the mandatory curricular internship at the Social Service Unit of the Bariatric Surgery Program of the University Hospital Professor Alberto Antunes (Federal University of Alagoas), where we received several complaints from users regarding the use of transport. We used as a methodological resource the bibliographic-documentary research of authors who approach obesity in a plural perspective, so that we could reach our general objective. We fulfilled the following specific goals of studies and data collection: where we mapped obesity as a social factor; we detail the elements that are involved in the prejudice suffered by these users with a focus on public transport; the general barriers that restrict the accessibility and mobility of people with obesity; and how it affects access to specialized health care that is performed in the Bariatric Surgery Program. In addition, we qualitatively analyzed the opinion of workers from the main urban mobility companies in Maceió (Alagoas), with the objective of evaluating the perception of employees about the impasse that the lack of accessibility and urban mobility directly impact on the health of users in situations of obesity, since it is a topic that is not widely disseminated socially, and if there is knowledge about the norms and legislation that are incumbent on these users. The results of this research allow us to understand how stigma affects the lives of these obese people to varying degrees, and what measures can be taken to reduce these cases where we evidence the daily suffering of this population, enabling dignified access to the rights they deserve. Users currently find themselves unprotected.