title: A scoping review of weight bias by community pharmacists towards people with obesity and mental illness.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Community pharmacists are accessible health care professionals who are increasingly offering weight management programs. People living with serious mental illness have markedly higher rates of obesity and associated illness outcomes than the general population, providing pharmacists who are interested in offering weight management services with an identifiable patient subgroup with increased health needs. Issues with stigma within obesity and mental illness care are prevalent and can lead to inequities and reduced quality of care.
  
  
  METHODS
  We conducted a scoping review to map and characterize the available information from published and grey literature sources regarding community pharmacists and weight bias towards obese people with lived experience of mental illness. A staged approach to the scoping review was used.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Six articles and 6 websites were abstracted after we removed duplicates and applied our inclusion and exclusion criteria. The published studies that we found indicated that pharmacists and pharmacy students do demonstrate implicit and explicit weight bias.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Very limited research is available regarding weight bias in pharmacists and stigma towards people with obesity, and we found no information on these phenomena relating to people with lived experience of mental illness. Investigations are needed to characterize the extent and nature of anti-fat bias and attitudes by pharmacists and the consequences of these attitudes for patient care.
authors.affiliation: College of Pharmacy (Murphy, Gardner), Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia.
authors.forename: Andrea L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Murphy
authors.affiliation: College of Pharmacy (Murphy, Gardner), Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia.
authors.forename: David M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Gardner