Andrea Bombak

Research interests

Dr. Bombak is a critical weight, health services, and public health scholar whose research critically explores messaging and policy concerning the “obesity epidemic” and the lived experience of weight stigma. She has led qualitative projects on bariatric surgery, body acceptance, weight stigma, post-secondary food education, and understandings of weight and health in Canada and the USA.

Presently, she is the principal investigator of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council-funded project that explores fatphobic, faith-based, and postfeminist (Girlboss) messaging in Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) social media posts and a Harrison McCain Young Scholars Award-funded study examining the marketing strategies used to sell Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonists (GLP-1 Agonists) like Ozempic and Wegovy.

She is also a co-investigator on a Canadian Institutes of Health Research-funded, mixed-method research program exploring attitudes toward sugar-sweetened beverages and related taxation in Canadian Indigenous (on and off-reserve) and non-Indigenous communities (PI: Dr. Natalie Riediger, University of Manitoba) with additional projects in India and rural Michigan.

Selected publications - books

Monaghan LF, Rich E, Bombak AE 2022. Rethinking Obesity: Critical Perspectives in Crisis Times. Routledge.

Peer-reviewed journal articles

Bombak AE, Turner L, Thomson L, O’Keefe K, Chinho N, Burk C, Akhter S. 2024. “You're just too much”: Higher-weight sexual and gender minorities experiences of stigma in Atlantic Canada. Journal of Critical Dietetics 7(2): 139-185.

Bombak AE, Adams M, Garofalo S, Russell C, Robinson E, Parker B, Riediger N, Cameron E. 2024. A critical discourse analysis of food studies and nutrition/dietetic post-secondary curricula. Canadian Food Studies Journal 11(1): 211-236.

Bombak AE. 2023. How drug companies misappropriate fat acceptance. Critical Public Health 33(5): 856-863

Bombak AE, Wong A, Parker B, Balcom S. 2023. Risky Others: Covid-19 reconstitutions of risk, governance, and stigmatization of bodies. Studies in Social Justice 17(3): 495-514.

Bombak AE, Adams L, Thille P. 2022. Drivers of Medicalization in the Canadian Adult Obesity Clinical Practice Guidelines. Canadian Public Health Journal 113(5):743-748.

Bombak AE, Colotti T, Riediger N, Raji D, Eckhart E. 2021. Fizzy Foibles: Sugar-Sweetened Beverages in America’s Midwest. Critical Public Health. 31(1)113-124.

Bombak AE, Riediger ND, Bensley JH, Ankomah S, Mudryj AN. 2020. A systematic search and critical thematic, narrative review of lifestyle interventions for the prevention and management of diabetes. Critical Public Health 30(1): 103-114.

Supervision areas

• Stigma
• Critical weight/fat studies
• Qualitative health research
• Health inequities
• Critical health policy and messaging
• The aging body
• Health services
• Gender and health
• Self-perceptions of health
• Social determinants of health
• Food studies