Curbing Obesity in School Children - Essay Example

Curbing Obesity in School Children Introduction Several studies show that obesity is the leading nutrition disorder in developed nations. Recently, obesity has been increasing steadily in U.S. from 1990 to 2010; the overweight growth in the children aged between 2 and 17 years has risen from 16% to 27%. The rise of overweight and obesity was the highest among the young people of ages between 12 and 18. Childhood obesity has immediate and long term health results (Ruthy, 2008). Children who are obese are currently being diagnosed with different health problems that were only seen in the adult age, these conditions are high blood pressure, cholesterol, sleep amnea and diabetes. On the other hand if a child becomes obese at early age it will increase the chances of that child being obese at adolescence or adult age together with all accompanying health complications. This epidemic will lead to the increase in health care costs and risk of productivity loss in the country economy resulting from high level of absenteeism and overweight related illness resulting from obese workforce and the aging population (Ruthy, 2008). Because many children are enrolled in schools, the schools have developed various different programs that will promote healthy eating and daily physical activities. Many schools are addressing this issue through establishment of a detailed health program using Mobilizing for Action through Planning and Partnerships (MAPP) program model. This program has 6 phases namely; Phase 1. Organize for Success Phase 2. Visionary Phase 3. Four MAPP assessments Phase 4. Identify Strategic Issues Phase 5. Formulate Goals and Strategies Phase 6. Action Cycle The first phase is about organizing for success. The school will organize the planning process and establishing the planning partnership. The importance of this phase is to develop a planning process that make commitments, engages students who will participate, and ensure time will be utilized during the process. The school management came up with a support team that will design and oversee the program and recruit children which will participate. The committee included the representative from the community and local public health system. The school committee carried out recruitment through invitation and the community will be invited to join the process. The committee identified the benefits and possible barriers that can be lined with the program. The school carried out a research in order to come up with the status of the diet and physical activity for the kids and craft policy recommendations. The second phase is about visioning. In this phase, the vision will guide the school committee throughout a collaborative and creative process that will heads towards having a shared committee vision. Vision and values will give direction and purpose top the program being implemented so that a shared vision for the future can be attained. Vision offers important mechanism of conveying the school and developing enthusiasm for the process, establishing the base for planning and giving a common framework throughout other phases that follows (Davies & Mousouli, 2008). The committee will design the visioning process and seek for community participation. The vision for the school is “the school is committed to developing and maintaining the conditions that results in healthy weights and no obesity so that kids can enjoy the healthiest possible live”. The third phase is about Four MAPP assessments. The assessments will provide significant information for improving the school healthcare program. The first assessment is about looking at the community themes and strengths assessment. This will provide an inner understanding on to question of what assets the school has that can assist in improving the health of the kids. The second assessment will look into the local public health system; in this the school will have to look into the organizations and entities that contribute to public health. This will assist the school know how to provide essential services and the components that are provided by the local public healthcare. The third assessment will be about community health status assessment, this assist the school identify important community health and quality of life issues and it will enable the school to know how healthy the children are. The last is about forces of change assessment. This change includes legislative, change in technology and other issues that can affect the context in which the public health operate. This will assist in knowing what might occur and how it will affect how the school health system will be operating. The fourth phase is about identifying strategic issues. The strategies identified by the set committee include developing policy and program guide line in school, improving the physical activities requirements and standard in school, having supportive environment, early action, implementing nutritional programs in school, Measuring and reporting on collective progress, nurturing school and community relationship that will end up promoting regular physical activities, engaging the kids, families, school departments, and neighboring communities in fostering healthy eating and daily physical activities, and lastly developing public awareness and learning campaigns (Holcomb, 2004). The fifth phase is about Formulating Goals and Strategies, this is where the committee will take the strategies identified and formulate the goals related to those issues. The first strategy is developing policy and program guidelines for the school. The school uses both national researches conducted to inform its policy together with state level policy to determine the status of the diet and physical activity to be done by kids. The policy recommends daily physical activities for the children, burning the sale of certain food like chunk food in school, developing training requirements and providing more education to school food service directors. The second policy is strengthening physical activities. It was recommended that the kids should receive 300 minutes per week for physical activities; these minutes are spread equally to from Monday to Friday. Toys like play mats, low climbing platforms, push and pull toys, rubber balls, and activity tables will help the kids play and it will be provided by the school. Time in devices like car seats and strollers will be limited because it will not give enough time for kids to stretch and it is a requirement that the kids should stretch and run around everyday. In the play ground, teachers together with the kids will play together in order to ensure that each an every kid get enough exercise. Gymnastics classes will be provided 3 times a week after classes; this will help stretch and strengthen the muscles. Physical education will be placed as part of the assessment and graduation requirement, this will be provided by a certified physical education specialist who will be employed by the school. The third is implementing nutritional policies. To achieve these kids should have a routine for meal time and sleeping. Snacking between meal times should be avoided. Small portion of a wide variety of food will be provided by the school, the portion will include 5 portions of fresh fruits and vegetables daily. The proteins that will be provided include beans, low fat dairy, chicken and fish. Fast food, processed foods and fructose in drinks will be limited in school. Lastly is about early action. The school will develop a program that will regularly monitor the kids’ growth, this is important in identifying the development of obesity. The program will involve the school and public health doctors visiting the schools once a week and check all the signs that will show the development of obesity. If a child is identified as having risk of obesity, immediate intervention should be taken to reverse the development of the disease. If the new kids in school are already suffering from overweight and obesity, an immediate action will be taken through changing the eating habits and providing them with enough exercise to attain healthy weight. The last phase is about action cycle. This is where planning, implementation and evaluation take place. After the selected committee finalized everything they will organize for action by convening the necessary participants which is the community members, public health specialist, and parents. The committee will then develop an action plan on how to achieve the outcome objectives. This action plan will ensure that the right materials required for physical activities are identified and purchased within time. Also the program for providing healthy diet will be put in place and the committee will ensure the program is attainable. The committee will then evaluate the cost of running the program, how healthy the program is and if it is attainable. The theoretical framework that relate to obesity is self cognitive theory. This theory is related to health communication and it deals with cognitive, emotional aspect and aspect of behavior for understanding the change in human behavior (Holcomb, 2004). Also the concepts of self cognitive theory provide a means of new behavioral research in health. The theory explains how human beings acquire some behaviors and it provides basis for intervention. Behavior change depends on the environment, people and behavior. Environment affect human behavior, there are two types of environment, social and physical environment. Social environment involve friends in school and family members. Physical environment involve availability of certain food and size of school compound. This factor will affect obesity since if there is no environment for children to play they will grow overweight due to the unburned fats in the body and with enough field for play it will reduce obesity, the type of food that is available will also play a role in the growth of the kids. Friends in school will affect the eating behavior of the kid. Behavior capability provide knowledge for a child to perform certain behavior, it will foster learning through skills training. The barriers that might hinder the program are the behavior of the kids. Some kids like watching TVs and playing video games most of the time, the school have solved the problem by banning TV watching and video games in school. Another challenge is that the community might not cooperate when it comes to implementing some policies such as providing playing ground for the kids. This can be solved by increasing awareness about the dieses to the community and giving advantage to their children by reducing the cost of education. Some parents are not aware about healthy eating and physical activities; this will disadvantage the children health during the holidays. The school can assist in providing public education to the parents in order to be aware of the disease. This will affect the program revision and continuation because as the school struggles to reduce the disease the community will be encouraging. This might discourage some parents from program. In conclusion, this program is important because it will help reduce the problem of obesity among the kids. Controlling obesity will help curb some other diseases such as high blood pressure, cholesterol, sleep amnea and diabetes. At the same time if a child becomes obese at early age it will increase the chances of that child being obese at adolescence or adult age together with all accompanying health complications. The problem will also help reduce the health care cost. The model is best fit for the program because it provides a means of new behavioral research in health. The model explains how human beings acquire some behaviors and it provides basis for intervention. It will provide knowledge on how some kids acquire their eating behavior and the solution on how to change it. References H. Dele Davies and Vasiliki Mousouli. (2008). Obesity in Childhood and Adolescence: Understanding development and prevention. New York: Greenwood Publishing Group James Holroyd (2008). Stop Obesity: An Answer to the Problem of Obesity and Its Complications. Toronto: AuthorHouse. Luis A. Moreno, Wolfgang Ahrens, and Iris Pigeot. (2011). Epidemiology of Obesity in Children and Adolescents: Prevalence and Etiology. Michican: Springer National association of county and city health officials. MAPP framework. Available at http://www.naccho.org/topics/infrastructure/mapp/framework/phase6.cfm Epstein LH, Myers MD, Raynor HA, et al.(1998). Treatment of pediatric obesity. Pediatrics. Vol.101. p.554–70. Ruthy W. (2008). Obesity, Physical Activity, and Healthful Nutrition: What Does the Pastor Think? Walden: Walden University. Public Health Holcomb, S. (2004). Obesity in children and adolescents: guidelines for prevention and management. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. 29(8): 9-15. Read More