About the Association for Size Diversity and Health (ASDAH)
The Association for Size Diversity and Health (ASDAH) is a non-profit organization with an international membership started in 2003. Our members and leaders are committed to the Health At Every Size® (HAES®) principles.
The HAES® movement is a continuously evolving alternative to the weight-centered approach to treating clients and patients of all sizes. It is also a movement working to promote size acceptance, to end weight discrimination and stigma, and to lessen the cultural obsession with weight loss and thinness.
Learn more about the HAES® approach.
Download the ASDAH Annual Report.
What We Believe
Mission
ASDAH’s mission is to partner with service providers, educators and advocates to dismantle weight-centered health policies and practices, ensuring that people who live with multiple forms of oppression are focusing our work.
Vision
We envision a world that celebrates bodies of all shapes and sizes, in which body weight is no longer a source of discrimination and where oppressed communities have equal access to the resources and practices that support health and well being.
Committed to Respect, Integrity, Justice & Inclusiveness
Respect is:
- Operating from a basis of consideration
- Affirming and celebrating our differences
- Taking personal and organizational responsibility for understanding and being sensitive to different cultures, oppressions, and marginalization
- Taking responsibility and apologizing when we make mistakes, and constantly improving as we move forward
- Seeking not to tolerate our differences but to fully understand, embrace, and affirm them at every level of the organization
We put respect into practice by:
- Offering our support and our disagreement with thoughtfulness and sensitivity
- Continually educating ourselves individually and as a group about cultures, oppressions and marginalizations from an intersectional perspective
- Being aware of our own forms of privilege and their effects on our worldview
- Listening to concerns that are brought to us with deep interest and wholehearted contemplation, never belittling or making light of the concerns or those bringing them
Integrity is:
- Conducting ourselves and our work with respect for people’s dignity
- Committing to ethical behavior in all of our dealings
- Remaining true to our vision, mission, and core values in all of our decisions
We put integrity into practice by:
- Being up front and truthful in all dealings with each other, our members, and people or groups outside the organization
- Subscribing to the strictest codes of ethics in all of our work
- Truthfully representing the findings and limitations of our research, beliefs, and positions
- Making decisions for the organization based on their adherence to our vision statement, mission statement, and our core values
Justice is:
- Using privilege to support and center the voices of those with less privilege
- Creating equality in access to information and opportunities
- Using resources in ways that create fairness and equality
We put justice into practice by:
- Using our platform to center the voices of groups that are marginalized within discussions of health and body size
- Using our resources to support demands for justice by these marginalized and oppressed people and groups
- Championing total equality of access to non-biased information, healthcare, food options, and movement options
- Fighting for a world without size-based discrimination or weight bias
Inclusiveness is:
- Fostering and celebrating diversity at every level of our organization
- Understanding, respecting, and working from a platform of intersectionality
- Knowing that what we are currently seeing and hearing is not all there is to be seen and heard
We put inclusiveness into practice by:
- Fostering intersectional representation at every level, every stage, every facet, and every project of the organization
- Continuously asking, “who aren’t we hearing from?”
- Continuously asking, “who are we hearing from too much?”
- Never valuing expediency or improvement for the majority over creating improvement for everyone, including and especially those with the least privilege