Obesity Prevention Health Program - Essay Example

Obesity prevention Introduction The health program discussed in this paper is about obesity prevention. Specifically, it is a proposed educational program that aims to impart to youngsters the dangers of obesity. It is a growing epidemic among the younger generations because of lifestyle changes and it has caught the attention of health professionals. Soaring levels of obesity among the young is now a top-level health concern among government policy makers. There are many reasons why an obesity epidemic is growing rapidly among the young and among these reasons are fast-food diets, plain and simple over-eating, a sedentary lifestyle spent mostly watching television and playing video games (Duckworth, 2002, p. 1). People, especially parents, often believe and perceive that fat children are the types of healthy kids they want to raise. This is because being thin is mainly associated with poverty, poor food nutrition or sickness. So people are predisposed to think healthy children need to be fat as it gives appearances of robust health. However, health experts are increasingly worried kids raised on fast-foods and lack of physical exercise are increasingly showing signs of heart diseases normally associated only with approaching middle age. Today, youngsters have been observed to exhibit early signs of cardiovascular disease like hypertension and also thickened arteries which are the precursors of a heart attack or stroke. Health experts agree that obesity is fast becoming a childhood health problem and myocardial infarction becoming a pediatric problem is now a real possibility (ibid.) with a growing prevalence of obesity. Its severity also is increasing with the emergence of type-2 diabetes now an ominous development. This paper aims to educate both parents and their kids about the dangers of childhood obesity. Discussion Childhood obesity is rarely recognized as a health danger because youngsters do not immediately exhibit the bad effects of obesity. However, as these kids grow older, the effects of being overweight begin to show. Further, treatments and prevention programs have so far been largely ineffective. It takes strong action and even strong willpower to overcome it early. This is because children who are obese tend to grow up as fat adults; it is very hard to reverse unhealthy lifestyle patterns as a person grows up and by that time, it is too late to take action. Family counseling on proper diet and nutrition, the benefits of regular exercise, eating more fruits and vegetables, a ban on food advertisements aimed at children and more school-based information campaigns are some of the measures being undertaken but all these programs are to be successful if there is substantial political will and constant follow up. The key to any of these programs is close monitoring to ensure adherence and compliance to program aims. Program Goals – this educational program aims to enlighten parents of young kids to be aware of the hidden dangers of obesity. As envisioned, this proposed health program will have as goals and objectives the inculcation of proper diet, nutrition and benefits of exercise to parents and their kids alike. This proposed educational health program will target the young kids who are starting kindergarten school, those between the ages of 5 – 6 years old and their parents, including their teachers. The idea is prevention, that is, prevent kids from getting fat in the first place. Childhood obesity usually starts at these ages, when children begin to learn new things, such as from watching television at home and interacting with their school mates. The proposed program, therefore, aims to integrate the benefits of healthy eating habits while these kids are not yet fat and prevent them from getting fat in the first place. This prevention program will probably be more effective compared to obesity reduction programs in which compliance is much more difficult when eating habits are already ingrained. Evaluation Process – obesity is defined in adults as having a body mass index (BMI) between 25 kg/m2 and 30 kg/m2 (merely overweight or pre-obese) while those exceeding the 30 kg/m2 limit as already obese. The World Health Organization has three classifications for obesity but these are for adults. For young children, there are no clearly defined categories as to what constitutes obesity except in relation to a historical normal group that uses the usual percentile methodology. In other words, there is difficulty in precisely assessing obesity in the young children and adolescents because there is no absolute number used like in adults. To do assessment if a child is obese or not is to use the entire children group's weight readings such that a child is deemed obese if his or her BMI is greater than the 95th percentile. The problem with using percentiles is that it will not correctly give accurate results. In other words, if the age group is getting heavier over the years, then those belonging over the 95th percentile will continue to be assessed as obese, but the lower 95th percentile has gotten a bit overweight too over the years under review. The overall average weight of young kids will have risen over the years but they will not be considered overweight or obese. This gives the wrong type of data that can lead to wrong conclusions and prescriptions for action. For this program, the actual weight of young kids in kindergarten school will have to be taken individually. To put it simply, this proposed program will not use the percentile type of methodology because it skews the data and its subsequent findings. Instead, the individual weight of each pre-schooler will be monitored during kinder-1 and kinder-2 for a period of two years. The ideal BMI for each kid will be taken, measured and recorded for evaluation of the program's effectiveness at the end of two years. This approach is taken despite the obvious difficulty involved in measuring kids' BMI because at a younger age, their BMI varies by age and gender. The objective will be to evaluate the kids' weight when they start their pre-school at age 5, track them for two years up to kinder-2 and then evaluate if they gained fat or not. Steps and Phases – the first step will be to identify the kindergarten schools that will be selected for the program. Planning for the program should be before the classes start as it will require some coordination with the school principals. For this program, only two schools will be identified and included. The ideal number of pre-schoolers that will be enrolled for the program will be around twenty only at the most. Considering that most kindergarten classes only have five pupils on the average, then two classes (one in the morning and in afternoon) will be chosen for each school (5 x 2 x 2 = 20 pupils in total). Each pupil will have his or her weight taken upon enrollment (or on the first day of the classes), recorded and then measured again every three months. This will give a progression of the child's weight over the entire two years (at start of Kinder-1 and at the end of Kinder-2). The program itself will consist of two parts: the first will be mostly educational and conducted in the classroom by integrating educational modules about the benefits of healthy eating such as the right type of foods as shown in the food pyramid using a graphic chart. This will make it more interesting to kids at that age level and catch their attention. The idea is to inculcate in them as early as possible why it is important to eat the right kinds of food for healthy bodies. The second part of the program will be doing simple physical exercises. Other options can include an hour or so of physical activity such as games and activities in a playground. It is the intention of this program to let kids use their excess calories instead of sitting only. The physical activities will be age-appropriate and approved by the school principal and closely supervised by a teacher and one teacher aide. A program like this requires close monitoring. It is desired that the program researcher or coordinator visit the school every other day and to do actual observations during the lecture part and the physical exercise part. To ensure a degree of compliance, the researcher should make a report after each visit, indicating the details and circumstances observed during the visit. This will ensure compliance as a report is written. Various Stakeholders – the groups identified as having a direct stake in this program are the parents and their pre-school kids while the school (principals and teachers) are indirect stakeholders. It is important to stress to the parents the dangers of obesity, ways of preventing it and obtain their approval for this educational program for inclusion in the curriculum. There are two ways of avoiding becoming overweight or obese and these are proper diet and correct physical exercise. It is critical to have the parents' buy-in to the program because they exert a tremendous influence on their kids; their role of parenting have a great bearing on behavior in their children such as the choice of foods to eat (Lindsay, Sussner, Kim & Gortmaker, 2006, p. 170). This is the parent-mediated portion of the obesity prevention intervention program. The teachers as second parents in the school also need to be convinced of the benefits of the program because they exercise direct supervision on the kids inside and outside their classrooms. They also need to be informed on the dangers of obesity and contributory factors such as having more calories intake than calories expenditure or the so-called energy balance (Anderson & Butcher, 2006, p. 20) when the children ate more “empty calories” and do fewer physical activities like riding in a school bus instead of walking to the school each day. Conclusion Data will be collected every quarter by measuring each child's weight and computed for the corresponding body mass index. The data will be adjusted for age and gender because kids have variable BMI while still assessing accurately whether a child is obese or overweight based on these BMI rather than depending mainly on the percentile methodology. Each child will still be tracked during the intervening summer vacation period with the researcher going to each household to take a child's weight. This will ensure no data gaps and at the same time constitute a follow up whether the parents are serving the right food diet at home. Obesity has reached epidemic proportions among the young (Kain, Gao, Doak & Murphy, 2010, p. 79). Reference List Anderson, P. M. & Butcher, K. F. (Spring 2006). Childhood Obesity: Trends and Potential Causes. The Future of Children, 16 (1), pp. 19-45. Duckworth, L. (2002, August 9). Rising Obesity Rates Could See Children Suffer Heart Attacks. The Independent. Retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/rising-obesity-rates-could-see-children-suffer-heart-attacks-639290.html Kain, J., Gao, Y., Doak, C. & Murphy, S. (2010). Obesity Prevention in Primary School Settings: Evidence from Intervention Studies. In E. Waters, J. Seidell & B. Swinburn (Eds.), Preventing Childhood Obesity: Evidence, Policy and Practice (pp. 79-87). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons. Lindsay, A. C., Sussner, K. M., Kim, J. & Gortmaker, S. L. (Spring 2006). The Role of Parents in Preventing Childhood Obesity. The Future of Children, 16 (1), pp. 169-186. Read More