Kacey Thigpen, LCSW
What should social workers do when clients bring up weight? How can we determine the most appropriate response? What research or evidence supports these approaches? These questions emerged from Kacey’s experience as a therapist in a behavioral hospital setting, where clients frequently shared experiences of weight stigma in connection with suicidal ideation. This prompted Kacey to further explore the field of weight stigma and seek a deeper understanding of how it often intersects with other systems of power.
Kacey is interested in weight stigma and its systemic impacts—ranging from barriers to accessing healthcare, increased healthcare avoidance, interpersonal stigma, and disparities in employment and education. Kacey aims to highlight how weight stigma not only harms individuals’ health and well-being but also contradicts the ethical foundation of helping professions. Kacey is committed to producing scholarship that critiques existing injustices and contributes to the development of more inclusive practices.
Kacey hopes to reframe how weight is understood in social work and related disciplines, shifting from an individual and deficit-based model toward one that values liberation and collective well-being. Kacey’s work seeks to cultivate a liberatory body consciousness within social work by engaging in Freirean critical conscientization around the sociohistorical constructs that shape our understanding of weight. Drawing from Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality, Kacey aims to better understand how weight intersects with gender, race, socioeconomic status, food insecurity, disability status, and age.
MSW:
Tulane University – New Orleans, LA
Research Interests:
Weight stigma and its systemic impacts through a trauma-informed, social justice lens
| bsb25001@uconn.edu |