Obesity: The Coming Pandemic - Essay Example

Section/# Obesity: The Coming Pandemic The United Kingdom Department of Health ranks obesity in children and adolescents as a prime health challenge and a key action area with reference to the quality of life and overall longevity of its citizens. As such, it is without question that the plethora of health issues associated with obesity (especially childhood obesity) are plaguing the developed world in ways never before imagined (Crombie et al, 2007). Hardly a day passes without mentioning in media that the increased rates of diabetes, heart disease, some forms of cancers, as well as a host of other diseases can all be attributed, at least in part, to the rapid increase in childhood obesity that is extant in our society. Accordingly, this brief analysis will attempt to reconcile and chronicle the steps the Department of Health recommends implementing with the extent to which these have corresponded to the literature and advice provided in the patient experience detailed at greater length later in this analysis. This paper presents details why both macro and micro implementation of obesity policy and treatment matter to society, regardless of what nation is attempting to tackle the problem. The cost to the nation in lost productivity, early death, and a diseased populace is staggering and, unfortunately, is indicative of only the tip of the iceberg with relation to the overall problem. To give a brief background with relation to the United Kingdom, obesity is estimated to cost the overall economy in excess of 5 billion pounds per fiscal year (Crombie et al, 2007). Obesity rates in the United Kingdom alone are up more than 65% over what they were in 1980. Currently, one out of every four children in the United Kingdom is considered obese with that figure rising to more than 50% for adults (Musingarimi, 2008). As such, the scope and magnitude of the situation is well exemplified. With such a massive cost, it is painfully obvious why the United Kingdom, as well as a host of other nations around the world, are suffering with the costs of obesity in their population while actively and single mindedly attempting to tackle the problem. It is without question that obesity worldwide can be linked to a host of diseases. Accordingly, some of the leading causes of Type 2 Diabetes and certain types of aggressive cancers are oftentimes highly dependent upon whether or not the individual is overweight and/or obese (Healthy Lives, Healthy People: A Call to Action on Obesity in England, 2011). Research conclusively shows that there is a direct correlation between a high body mass index and the prevalence of disease on those individuals who are either overweight or obese – as such it is within the best interests of the entire society, specifically the medical community, to educate and alert its citizens of the many dangers associated with weight gain and how they can effectively and safely lose weight while maintaining good practices of healthful eating combined with a tailored exercise regime that fits their lifestyle and their specific needs. The United Kingdom Department of Health is a prime example of a governmental body that has taken an active role in targeting obesity and actively working to implement goals and institutions that will help to lessen this growing problem in society. As such, the Department of Health has listed targeting weight loss goals in adults and children by 2020 as one of their prime concerns. In much the same manner, Holly Lane Clinic and its staff work to pass these concern along to the patients we treat on a daily basis so that the impact and severity of the illnesses and tangential problems over the long run associated with individuals suffering from being overweight and/or obese might be lessened. Accordingly, the ultimate realization is that almost all health literature, as well as multiple government health services around the world, have come to understand that each of us is responsible for our own health. However, there are some recommendations and policy implementations that the governments (federal and local – as well as individual clinics) can perform that will help to aid in the dissemination of knowledge that will hopefully help to achieve the goals set forward in the paper. As part of their policy development plan, the United Kingdom Department of Health has Key Action Areas with respect to bettering policies and implementation of programs to benefit key areas of world health. These include: 1: Empowering individuals through the dissemination of guidance, tailored support on weight management, focus on BMI and where an individual should rank in comparison to a healthy individual their same age, height and weight. 2: Building a partnership with the food and drink industry and cultivating those ties to encourage more responsible labeling and more quality and healthful choices for the citizens of the nation. 3: Relying on local governments to tackle key problems that they face which may not be country wide so that they can specifically target weight problems as they uniquely pertain to them. 4: Building the evidence base by continuing to research and analyze what the key trends and patters are with regards to obesity in both adults and children. Only by building a further evidence base can the problem associated with obesity come to be more clearly understood. 5: Creating a full and complete database with relation to obesity – to be performed by carefully gathering metrics with relation to obesity in the population. 6: Building local capacity to train patients and distribute the aforementioned information to them so that they may take an active and competent role in preserving their own health. 7: Bringing together a coalition of partners and working to raise awareness in all sectors of nutrition and health with regards to the growing threat and existential problem of obesity. 8: Helping people to become more active through the implementation and use of grants that focus on the long term effects of sedentary lifestyle as well as grants encouraging people to spend more active hours during the day rather than being sedentary. 9: Transforming the environment – to set a list of goals to encourage workplaces and industry that address obesity. As such, not all of these steps directly apply to childhood/adolescent obesity; yet, tangentially, they all relate to the overall goal of increasing the health and longevity of the world’s population. Accordingly, this analysis will review how each of these recommendations is shaping the way in which health care professionals, specifically those at the Holly Lane Clinic, have been dealing with the growing prevalence of obesity, as well as counseling and providing information to patients that suffer from obesity. It goes without saying that preventing childhood/adolescent obesity is an issue that is incumbent upon the parents or caregivers of the child. As such, it is a responsibility that does not start when the child is first showing signs of obesity; instead, it is a process that starts from birth. As such, our clinic regularly counsels women on the importance of breastfeeding their infants as a means to both pass on maternal immunity as well as provide a healthy basis for the child once he or she is weaned (WHO). Corresponding to the Department of Health directives, our clinic was directly responsible for regularly counseling expecting mothers, as well as providing them with the requisite information concerning the steps they should be taking in order to ensure the proper health of unborn child. Accordingly, the health of the pregnant mother is of extreme importance as it relates to the overall mortality rates, as well as congenital disorders that the child is subjected to dependent upon the overall level of obesity that the mother might experience during pregnancy. In order to address this pressing need, our clinic regularly dispensed printed material and counseled pregnant patients with regards to best practices they should be observing during the time they were pregnant, as well as healthful and useful ways that they could work to shed excess weight once the mother had given birth. Additionally, information and counsel was regularly given to expecting and breastfeeding mothers as to the correct amount of time they should breastfeed their infants and how the change to solid food should be effected. Although the benefits of breast milk to the infant are numerous, the process itself is helpful to the mother in that it is able to help her to return to her former figure as it is a calorically intensive process that burns a great deal of the weight that is often gained during the nine months of pregnancy. Sarah, a young overweight adolescent, was one of the many who were treated in our clinic and counseled by our team concerning weight loss and the long-term effects of obesity on her overall health. The approach that was taken closely mirrored the guidelines set out by the Department of Health that have been previously discussed. As this situation was the micro level of a macro plan, it was the responsibility of the clinic and its employees to provide to Sarah and her family the tools, advice, and guidance necessary to provide them with the knowledge to effect a positive change in the patient’s life. As such, our first area of focus was to discuss the implications that obesity had for the long term with her parents. In such situations, the parents are oftentimes either ill-informed or ambivalent to the specific needs that an overweight/obese child or adolescent may have. In order to accomplish these goals, our team set about doing some preliminary research as to what the main causal factors were that related to Sarah’s obesity; thereby we would be able to offer a more informed plan to help ameliorate the weight problems she was currently suffering from. Once we discussed the type of lifestyle and diet that as typical for Sarah on a weekly and seasonal basis (i.e. the differences between her in school and out of school activity level), our team had a more sound understanding of the fact that Sarah was a young girl who was suffering from a poor diet combined with little to no activity. Rather than merely telling the parents to change this, we provided the parents with a great deal of nutritional and lifestyle guidance and information (WHO Action Plan for Food and Nutrition Policy 2007-2012). Additionally, we requested that Sarah and her parents return to the clinic for a follow up in one month so we might re-access the progress that had been made, as well as the extent to which the parents had taken to hear the advice we had provided. This particular step directly related to Key Point 4 of the Department of Health’s Key Points laid out previously in this analysis. Likewise, by raising the awareness level of her parents (the key shareholders in this situation as Sarah was not yet of age to make her own health care decisions), we were drawing upon Key Points 1, 6, and 8. As such, our clinic worked to educate the parents with regards to how to implement a diet for Sarah and not in the traditional sense of the term diet that they might understand to mean that she would be only eating less but targeting what foods were off limits and for small portions and what foods she needed to be eating more of. Sarah’s case was like many in that she was a young girl who was simply eating too much fattening food whilst not getting enough exercise and activity. Therefore, we discussed with the parents at length concerning the need to begin augmenting healthful foods, grains, fibers, fruits and vegetables all the while phasing out processed fatty foods that Sarah had become so accustomed (Obesity: Guidance on the Prevention, Identification, Assessment, and Management of Overweight and Obesity in Adults and Children, 2011). Accordingly, our team provided the parents with a list of affordable and readily available healthy foods that they could begin inserting into Sarah’s daily diet. Further, we counseled and gave advice with relation to how to handle her response to this dietary change. It goes without saying that many parents eventually cave in to the demands of their children, especially when it comes to what they want to eat and when they want to eat it. Furthermore, the parents were counseled on the lifestyle changes that they would have to make in order to ensure Sarah’s health improvement. They were counseled that changing the child’s diet may be an inconvenience to their own dietary habits; however, a far larger inconvenience to them would be the fact that they would now be responsible for actively participating to increase the overall level of activity in Sarah’s life (Dixon, 2004). As the child was receiving practically zero exercise, either in the formal sense of the word or as it relates to outdoor playtime, the parents were responsible for fostering an active lifestyle for the child and being intimately engaged and familiar with the overall level of exertion that Sarah received on a daily basis. Again, it was the responsibility of our staff to ensure that the parents understood the necessity of this advice as the drawbacks of inaction on their part were a continuing negative trend as it related to Sarah’s overall health and wellbeing. Therefore, the information we counseled them on hinged upon the fact that they must be loving but firm with relation to implementing the new dietary restrictions, as well as exercise and activity requirements as there was likely to be a resistance to the changes on Sarah’s part. Additionally, with the growing numbers of overweight children suffering from the many tangential problems associated with obesity, prevention alone is not the only guidance we are charged with providing our patients. Even though standard dietary habits are employed and implemented, even understood by many to be universal, the level of acceptance of these is not as universal as one might be led to believe. As a result, there are a great number of patients who frequent our clinic that are either ambivalent to or unaware of the dangers that a poor diet can have on their overall health outlook. These are the patients that are most in danger and these are the most difficult to reach as prior evidence and knowledge has not convinced them to work to achieve a healthier lifestyle for themselves or their children; as such, the difficulties of bridging the gap and providing them with useful and relevant information, as well as convincing them of the poignancy of this information becomes a difficult task. Accordingly, outreach and education form the primary means through which our clinic is able to engage the population and work to decrease the many drawbacks of an increasingly overweight society. As such, regardless of the country in question, these macro tools adequately work at the micro level and provide detailed and specific guidelines with which to offer to patients. It is the clinical level which is the most important towards effecting these macro changes as each one of the steps hinges upon the ability of the clinical level to gain the respect and trust of the patient and minister to their unique needs as proscribed by the physician. References Crombie, I., Irvine, L., Elliot, L., Wallace, H. “Public Health Policy to Tackle Obesity: An International Perspective”. National Health Service – Scotland, 2005. pp. 1-80. Dixon, J., 2004. Public Involvement in Health Care. BMJ, 328, 159-161. “Healthy Lives, Healthy People: A Call to Action on Obesity in England”. National Department of Health, 2011. pp. 1-54. Musingarimi, P., 2008. Obesity in the UK: A Review and Comparative Analysis of Policies within the Devolved Regions. [Online] Available at: http://www.ilcuk.org.uk. [Accessed 07 September 12]. “Obesity: Guidance on the Prevention, Identification, Assessment, and Management of Overweight and Obesity in Adults and Children”. National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, 2006. pp. 1-84. “World Health Organisation Action Plan for Food and Nutrition Policy 2007-2012” World Health Organization, 2011. pp. 1-35. Read More