Obesity in Canadian Children - Assignment Example

Topic: Obesity in Canadian children Introduction In the recent times, the focus has shifted to the problem of being overweight and obese in children and the implications that this has on the society now and when the children will reach adulthood to demand help so that they can deal with their life expectancy that will have become lower. The purpose of this paper it to critically look at how childhood obesity has developed to be a community issue in Canada since it has become rampant and more diseases can now be associated with it. Between 1970 and 1998 the population of people that were obese in Canada increased by more that 50 per cent (Katzmarzyk, 2002). Obesity can be said to be a condition that is characterized by excess adipose tissue which is the tissue that is under the skin that change in amount when we lose or gain weight and is comprised of eighty percent fat which is glyceryl esters of fatty acids, two percent proteins and eighteen percent water. Why obesity in Canadian children is a community health issue It is obvious these days that food can be delivered to anywhere without the person that wants it putting any physical effort to get it and the notion that food had to be worked hard for no longer applies in this day and age. It is easy to get a delivery of pizza at our doorsteps and acquiring food no longer needs the people to spend significant energy in looking for it so that they can replace it. There has been evidence that has been discovered to suggest that the epidemic of obesity that is ongoing has taken on a nature that is self-sustaining and the danger of children becoming obese and eventually growing into adulthood with it seems to be considerably affected by the intrauterine environment and many of the diseases that these children will have when they become adults will be connected to the conditions that they grew up with (Katzmarzyk and Janssen, 2004). Historical perspective There has always been a nationwide worry by the health commentators in Canada about malnutrition in children where they used the weight of the children to measure their nutritional health since the malnourished children were underweight but the eventual emphasis on weight identified being overweight as another form of malnutrition . As a result of this, child obesity had become a part of the wider discourse that existed in Canada that was associated with obesity. The concern that was developed about child obesity in Canada was necessitated by the awareness on malnutrition even though the mentions of it were patchy in the early decades. The mortality rate that is associated with obesity and being overweight has been on the rise in every province in Canada with the highest numbers being in the Eastern parts of Canada. Based on the research that was done by this agency, it was discovered that fifteen percent of the population could be considered to be obese in the years 2000-2001 and this has increased three times in the past decades. The Canadians that are obese and also the other obese people are likely to suffer from serious diseases that include hypertension, diabetes and cardiovascular heart disease than those that are of average weight (Katzmarzyk and Janssen, 2004). Even those that consider themselves to be moderately overweight increase their risks of suffering from these diseases if they do not do anything about their weight in time assuming that the excess weight that they are carrying is constituted by fat and not muscle (Katzmarzyk and Janssen,2004). Economic determinant This situation is not being improved since in a place like Manitoba in the year 2001, one third of the schools that exist there had sponsorships from companies that were in the food and beverage industry with most of them being with Coca-Cola and PepsiCo that are big multinational companies. This made the level of availability of beverages and snacks that are of very poor nutritional value in the vending machines that are installed in the schools, the school’s stores, and the canteens and cafeteria increase and the same situation was replicated in the high schools as it is the situation in the United States where fundraising events that are conducted by the schools for various reasons are highly dominated by these products that have very low nutritional value (Abergel & Macrae, 2012). When looking that most of the schools that are in Canada, it will be discovered that snack and beverage vending machines are more prevalent in the secondary schools while the tuck shops and fundraisers that are heavily associated with food are found to be concentrated in the elementary schools even though some of the schools claimed to have nutritional policies in place (Abergel & Macrae, 2012). The subject of funding the shortfalls that the schools might be experiencing through the use of tuck shops and fundraisers that are mainly based on food as the main means of remedying the difficulties that arise from the budgets can be viewed clearly as a vicious circle since it possesses negative consequences for the nutritional environments that exist in the schools (Roux and Donaldson, 2004). Unfortunately even if the schools take measures to correct this, it has been proven that there is a great availability of establishments that deal in fast –foods and convenient stores that are within a walking distance of most of the public schools. The clustering of these fast food outlets was based on the income of the neighborhoods that they existed in, with many of them being located in the neighborhoods that had low income also the foods that are sold in the supermarkets mainly target children. Social determinants Even though the problem of obesity is not unique to a particular group and runs across a whole range of economic and social contexts, it is strongly related to the disparities that occur in the socio-economic scene (Dubé, 2010). Childhood obesity can be seen to be higher in the population segments that are poorer not only in Canada and the other countries that are developed, but also in the countries that are still developing, where is particularly depend on the economic growth and development. When considered bluntly, poverty can be said to be bad for overall health and the body mass index and obesity cannot be addressed without addressing low income, lack of proper education and all the other causes of poverty since they complement each other (Dubé, 2010). The studies have shown that the prevalence of obesity was inexplicably concentrated among the children that were aged between six and eleven and lived in the homes that had incomes below the poverty line between 1988 and 1994 (Katzmarzyk, 2002).This statistics might have changed in terms of the earnings and the poverty line but the problem that is obesity in children is still rampant when it is associated with the families that have a relatively low income. The children that came from families that were poor in Canada had an average of eighteen percent excess thresholds in terms of obesity while those that came from the families that were relatively better of had an excess of only sixteen percent (Dubé, 2010). This shows that the social inequalities that are associated with obesity in children are historically specific and dynamic when considered in the case of Canada (Dubé, 2010). The secular trends that are therefore associated with the distribution of childhood obesity may indicate changes that are in the underlying social processes that will differentially dispense the elements that are proximal of child obesity across the social groups that are distinguished by race and ethnicity. Political perspective The House of Commons Standing Committee on Health noted in a report that it present in the year 2007 that Canada was among the countries that were in the developed world whose rates of obesity in children was disturbingly high since it had been ranked at number five out of the thirty four that constitute the OECD countries that have seen a development of obesity as an epidemic in the last thity years. It is unfortunate that most of the jurisdictions in Canada have not been able to address the forces that are underlying that directly affect the environment that is associated with food in the secondary schools and they have paid very little attentions to the culinary issues that exist such as making healthy food available to the young people and encouraging them to take up healthy eating (Raine, 2004). They have also been unable to address the impact that the food environment that is thriving adjacent to the schools have on the overall health of the children that go to these schools (Raine, 2004). Group most affected by obesity Scholars today are sensitive about the divisions among Canadians that are based on gender, ethnicity and class unlike the physicians and the nutritionists that existed in the past who referred to children in a genetic way when referring to white, middle-class children that hailed from urban centres (Katzmarzyk and Janssen, 2004). Mothers are the primary caregivers of children and often they are blamed by the physicians of helping to escalate the situation of obesity through improperly feeding the children this is not actually the case since today the children have developed a purchasing power that enables them to be in a position that they can get whatever they want to eat in terms of food and the mothers don’t necessarily have to be involved . The teenagers and adolescents that are from the more affluent families are more likely to involve themselves in the unhealthy eating and less in the exercise activities that are supposed to burn the calories that they have gained (Gemoscan Canada, 2013). The school administrations and the parents are in a better situation to help the children make amends in the foods that they prefer to it and encouraging them to take up physical activities such as sports that are aimed at making the healthier in the long run. There are deterrent that work against this though and therefore they do make the situation any better such as the schools that continue to run the tuck shops that still make available the foods that are not healthy to the and even if the schools manage to act on this situation and change what they sell in the tuck shops to be healthier, the fast-food establishments that are all around the schools still escalate this problem since dealing with them will be a lengthy process. Roles and responsibilities of the community health nurse in relation to childhood obesity Since obesity that is in the adolescents will go on to make obese adults, the treatment of childhood obesity is an important measure that should be clearly considered and the goals of therapy in the case of obesity that is not complicated should be directed to eating meals that are healthy for the body but not to the achievement of body weight that is considered to be ideal. Families should be enlightened and made aware of the eating habits that are currently prevailing, the activities that they should take part in, and parenting behavior and how this can be improved to make the situation better. The job of the community health nurse will be to help the parent of the children that have complications that are secondary to the obesity to try to normalize the weight while they are treating the complications that might have arisen. She should discourage the people that are affected by the obesity from taking part in diets that are unsupervised since these tend to complicate the problems that they may have and it may also be a source of depression in the event that they will not work in their favor. According to the Ottawa Charter for Heath Promotion, the role of the community health nurse would be to implement the healthy public policy that will have been established through legislation so that she can work towards reducing the amounts of obesity that are prevailing. She will also have the mandate to create an environment that will be supportive to the people that are affected by obesity by advising the people that are concerned about the ways that they can be able to deal with the issues. The community health nurse will also be able to strengthen community actions through encouraging participations that are aimed at making the people that are affected by the obesity in children more aware of the situations and the consequences that are associated with it. The people that are affected by obesity will also be assisted to develop personal skills by the nurse so that they can be able to understand the conditions that develop as a result of obesity and how to manage them and improve their health (Rice, 2000). Voice and power Children learn and get their habits from examples that are mostly from their parents, this means that the parents have the power to shape what the children are eating right from the weaning stage. When a child is introduced to a diet that is healthy and that child is modelled to create a habit out of this, the child will not need to be supervised on what to eat once he or she is older because the culture of eating healthy is instilled already. Parents also have the power to make the children prefer foods that are unhealthy depending on the foods the kind of diets that they feed their children on from the beginning. Many different organisations are trying to improve the situation through programs that target the people that are affected by listening to them and finding out how they can assist based on their cases (Gemoscan Canada Inc., 2013). Power relationships between the people that are affected by obesity are intricate, since most of the children that have the conditions are not willing to come out and face it because of the fear that the other children that they school with might laugh at them. This makes it more difficult for the parents that are willing to help their children to get through this condition since the children themselves are unwilling. Preventing and treating childhood obesity Overweight children and the children that are obese is a problem that is causing a rise in public health concerns since there is no clear definitions or measures that are consistent and the criteria for classification for the childhood overweight and obesity. Solutions of the problems of child obesity also need to be addressed through partnerships that will involve the whole community, the people that are in the position to make decisions, the researchers and also the practitioners so that they can be able to use different kinds of knowledge that they possess bot explicit and implicit to deal with this problem. Working strategies that will be used will also need to be developed so that they can be directed at solving this problem. Focus groups will also work towards making dialogue available to the community and enabling the people to have a discussion and exchange the experiences and opinions that they have so that they can be able to re-evaluate the programs that they have and give them a chance to be able to iron out the issues so that they can be able to be helped by the healthcare providers since they are more open. The way that the public schools handle the tuck shops and the canteens and the foods and beverages that are available in these places is an issue that will also need to be considered when the solutions for the obesity problem are being sought. Although it might be difficult to deal with the fast food restaurants and establishments that operate outside the schools and have the children as their main customers, it will still be imperative that something be done to amend the situation (Dorothy, 2000). Conclusion The factors that are associated with obesity are varied and therefore need to be addressed collectively so that the problem can be solved properly and in a way that will not be hurtful to the people that are affected by it. The various institutions that are in a position to make policies that are supposed to address the situation should be able to step up and act as soon as possible so that the problem can be addressed in time. Eating healthy foods and activities that have a physical nature should also be encouraged at school and also at home so that the children that are most affected by obesity can remain active which is a good step in the prevention and reducing of obesity. References Abergel, E. A. & Macrae, R. J. (2012). Health and sustainability in the Canadian food system. Vancouver: UBC Press. Dorothy P. Rice, (2000). “Cost of Illness Studies:  What Is Good About Them,” Injury Prevention, Vol. 6, p. 177. Dubé, L. (2010). Obesity prevention. Amsterdam: Elsevier/Academic Press. Gemoscan Canada Inc. (June 24, 2013): weighing in on the obesity epidemic in canada following the american medical associations designation of obesity as an official disease. Retrieved from http://globenewswire.com/news-release/2013/06/24/555915/10037414/en/Gemoscan-Canada-Inc-Weighing-in-on-the-Obesity-Epidemic-in-Canada-Following-the-American-Medical-Association-s-Designation-of-Obesity-as-an-Official-Disease.html?print=1 Katzmarzyk, P,. & Janssen, I. (2004). “The Economic Costs Associated With Physical Inactivity and Obesity in Canada:  An Update,” Canadian Journal of Applied Physiology, 29(1), p. 104. Katzmarzyk, P. (2002) “The Canadian Obesity Epidemic:  An Historical Perspective,” Obesity Research, 10(7), p. 666-674. NASDAQ OMXs News Release Distribution Channel. Raine (2004) Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), Improving the Health of Canadians. Retrieved from https://secure.cihi.ca/free_products/IHC2004rev_e.pdf Roux, L., & Donaldson, C. (2004). “Economics and Obesity:  Costing the Problem or Evaluating Solutions?”  Obesity Research, 12( 2), p. 173-179. Read More