Preventing Obesity through Health Promotion Programs

What Is The Guidelines Among Children Risk For Obesity?

Health plays a very important part in everyone’s life. It is important to prevent and promote the health issues among the society to ensure healthy lifestyle. In this report issue regarding obesity is discussed and how it can be overcome (Black, et. al, 2017). Obesity is a greater risk in younger children’s due to adoption of western lifestyle patterns, healthy food insecurity, and cultural ad socio economic status. This issue is rising day by day; therefore to control this illness proper steps are taken. Programmes are initiated to improve the diet plans among children’s and promoting the importance of physical activities among youth. This illness is mainly found in poor families as they don’t have healthy lifestyle, hence strategies are designed in a way that supports the socio economic causes (Flattum, et. al, 2015). Heath Promotion is a tool that creates the awareness among the youth by building healthy policies, strengthening the action plans and creating supportive environment.

Obesity is continuously rising among younger children. That is they are having overweight which causes the risk of developing some disease like heart attacks, stress or diabetes in later stage (Woo Baidal, et. al,  2015). There are various reasons why children’s suffer from obesity that is lack of physical exercise, unhealthy diet or some hormonal changes. Hence it is important to make children aware about the causes and there affects, for this health promotion is needed. According to World Health Organisation , in Canada one of three children’s are overweight (Al-Mahmood, et. al, 2018).

Health Promotion programs are designed to provide planned, organised and structured activities that basically focuses on the helping an individual to make healthy decisions regarding the health. These programs help in promoting policies at the environment or at legislative level that changes the health problems among people (Wang, et. al,  2017). They are basically designed to work for target population that have come issues related to health. Thus these planned programs are implemented and evaluated on the priority population. First of all the information regarding the health issue is gathered then the plan is designed according to the needs and desire.  For effective health promotion schools, workplace and health care organisation are engaged that gathers more people.

Health promotion can be attained by combination of two actions that is health education and environmental actions that supports an individual for living a healthy life. One of the major diseases that would be discussed in this report is obesity in younger children.  This could be resolved by facilitating the children about the knowledge and behaviours they need to adopt to observe health changes. Educational programs are conducted for children’s in schools that help in giving instructive and interactive information about the disease. Health education programs among children’s helps them in improving health knowledge, health attitudes, skills and behaviours to attain a good health status. As obesity is seen among younger children’s thus programs are launched in schools, child care institutes, high schools, colleges and universities.

Causes of Obesity in Children

The aim of this is to find the major causes of the obesity and how it could be prevented. The purpose is to access the issues and cultivate an appropriate plan for removing the health inequalities from the society (Must, et. al, 2017). Thus programs are implemented to deliver proper care to the patients. As obesity is majorly observed among younger children’s therefore health care strategies are launched at schools by launching activities that would increase the performance. The aim is to remove the health issue and attain healthy environment. To improve the performance the aim is to address wider population and invent new activities to provide best services to patients. It ensures that health inequalities are removed from the society by empowering an individual about the importance of healthy lifestyle. Programs are initiated to improve the health sector and safeguarding the patients from their sufferings (Economos, et. al, 2014).

Health Promotion needs to be done at each level such as at public, community, and organisation, interpersonal and intrapersonal level. For any disease public policies regarding health actions and practise for prevention of disease, early detection and its controls are taken care. At community level social networks are developed for an individual to cope up with disease faster (Kunin-Batson, et. al, 2015). Organisation factors are introduced like rules and regulations, policies are designed to promote recommended health behaviours. Health promotion can be done at interpersonal level also that includes friends and family that helps in providing social identity and support to an individual.

Understanding the theory- First of all it’s important to know the theory of the disease, its concepts, situation why it occurs, variables associated with the problem are analysed deeply. As knowing the theory is a primary block for planning health promotion (Eldredge, et. al, 2016). These theories and variables are basic forms used to construct a plan. As it acts like a road map in planning an appropriate health strategy, it is very useful because it helps in knowing the target audience, the methods that could be adopted and helps in analysing the pros and cons of the disease (Eldredge, et. al, 2016) It is just an indicator that is used to make future decisions. All the theories of health promotion programs Focuses on the perception of an individual regarding the risk associated with the health issue, its benefits and how it could be removed, what are the basic factors of the cause of this disease. Thus it is the first step that helps community to take proper actions to prevent the illness.

Health Promotion Strategies to Reduce Obesity Risk in Children

Knowing potential audience- Before designing a plan it is important to know which target audience are prone to this disease and what level of risk is associated with them. This helps in knowing an accurate perception of the illness. So that plan could be designed according to the seriousness of the situation by specifying recommended actions. Then deciding the place where plan could be executed (Eldredge, et. al, 2016).

Health behaviour is highly influenced by the social networks that may be friends, family, co-workers and others. They help in conveying children about the healthy eating values and can promote to perform physical activities so that they don’t gain much weight. Promotion can be done by offering opinions to younger ones regarding the views who to handle a situation by providing advice or suggestion.

Creating promotion strategies- Once the target audience is decided it is important to find out the strategies to promote health concerns. There are various ways like launching educational sessions, printing brochures at public places, doing social marketing campaigns, setting a goal, media campaigns or creating policies and procedures (Baxter, et. al, 2014). It is easy to find an appropriate promotion strategy as health groups are identified and their health status is known.

Assessment- This majorly deals with gathering detail information regarding causes and the disease symptoms thus the target population are made aware about the risk factors, types of possible disabilities, how long this health issue will last, impact of the illness, laws made for the treatment and available health care centres (Baxter, et. al, 2014).

Objectives and their actions- This is the last step that identifies all the objective of the illness and its appropriate actions that need to be taken. Like in case obesity in younger children actions taken are:

• Routine check-ups regarding immune system, body growth, physical activities and the environmental factors around them.
• Checking the family factors to avoid the chance of genetic problems.
• Launching protective surveys in schools, like making compulsion to have physical exercise sessions in school.
• Checking on eating habits of an individual.

Promotion plans- For treatment of obesity among children physical activities are influenced in their life’s by properly accessing children’s activities (Power,  Philip and Bersamin, 2016). The Canadian guidelines recommended that children’s from birth should be engaged in daily physical activities. Plans are issues to provide positive impact among youth by strongly influencing family to take proper actions. School Beverages policy where launched so that students take a proper intake of food. This is done by:

• Inspiring low income families to buy healthy food
• Arranging healthy options is school available
• Introducing daily sessions of physical exercise
• Providing proper training sessions

Impact evaluation- Once the promotion is done regarding the illness, its impact is evaluated. By gathering the feedback from all the programs it helps in deciding whether the promotion strategy was useful or some alternative need to be adopted (Hickey, et.al,  2018). Examining about the outcome gained by promotion like was it cost effective, improved public satisfaction and awareness.

Assessing the Impact of Health Promotion Programs

In general, the cause of obesity among children is due to environmental, societal or individual conditions. This is due to lack of money or opportunity to eat healthy diet that is due to suffering of poverty. As the youth now a days eat unhealthy food that has high fats and calories this can be due to their interest or low income of family. Not only food habits but the environmental reasons like lack of physical exercises and outdoor games are the reason of gaining weight. Younger children’s mostly spend their leisure time in front of laptops or gadgets (Cohn, et, al, 2018). Thus health promotion model is used to solve this problem that deals with social determinants and its action plans. Social determinates deals with the condition in which a person is living or was born, to avoid uncertainties health services are developed and provided to children’s for free. Physical environment is created in every society so that children get a place to play and perform physical activities. This is achieved by removing inequalities from the society by building healthy policies, creating supportive environment and creating health services (Cunningham, et. al, 2018).

To evaluation for obesity among younger children lead to development of many positive outcomes. To prevent overweight issues metabolic activities was issued for regular basis to improve the health as well as academic results. It was assessed that children’s should be engaged in physical activities for at least an hour. Other than that assessment relieved that reason of obesity was somewhere their personal behaviour like sitting for long duration, playing video games lead to development of chronic disease (Valente,  2012). Also due to consumption of food that has high sugar supported children in gaining weight, this needs to be avoided. Thus only solution for this problem is inculcating them to eat healthy food; families were surveyed regarding the proper diet plans that need to be given to their children (Braverman, 2010). Like regular consumption of healthy breakfast, vegetable and fruit consumption will prevent the person to gain weight. It was also evaluated from the research that due to inadequate sleep in youth is also the reason for gaining weight.

There are various types of evaluation method like formative, process, outcome or impact evaluation. Formative evaluation is basically used to achieve a particular goal (Glasgow, Vogt and Boles, 2010). Process evaluation helps in accessing the problem and developing proper activities. Outcome evaluation is used to attain short term goals. Impact evaluation is used to spread awareness. Thus for this case a combination of process and impact evaluation is used.

Introducing the framework is decided like which target audience need to be focused, what are the key issues, describing the program that would be used, gathering information and ensuring the goal is clear (Creswell and Clark, 2017).

1. Finding stakeholders- It means finding proper health educators or society planners that could enhance the motivation of physical exercise. This stakeholder offers various options to overcome with the health issues (Creswell and Clark, 2017). They understand the basic problem and implement a program for the people who are being affected by the disease.
2. Describing the program- A proper logic programmer is designed according to the issues. A program is developed to reduce the issue and focuses on improving the illness (Creswell and Clark, 2017). A program helps in estimating the effectiveness and estimating proper steps to be undertaken.
3. Focusing on Evaluation- It checks the outcomes of the programs, has it increased the awareness among people, did it affect the society and as the causes of disease decreased. If the outcome is not positive it showcases that plan need to be changed. It can be treated as a feedback medium.
4. Analysing- It is important to gather the information and check if it is trustworthy (McQueen, 2011). It is a very essential step as performance is measured so that future plans could be moulded.
5. Justifying the conclusion- It interprets the result and compares the outcomes with the objective. As looking back to the programs standards designed are interpreted and results are judged according to its impact (McQueen, 2011). If it has negative impact proper recommendation are given.
6. Ensuring the outcomes- This step involves taking the follow up and exploring positive and negative implications.

Conclusion

It can be concluded that major reasons of obesity among children is due to lack of outdoor games and spending most of the time in front of computers and eating unhealthy food. The children of today’s era are less healthy and have possibly shorter lifespans than the previous generation. Canada is not alone but this problem is seen in major countries but to overcome from these issues various solutions are launched. Unique and advanced strategies are developed to remove the inequalities from the society. Monitoring overweight and obesity status of children’s helps in designing the protective measures. After introducing various promotion measures the illness was not completely removed but public were aware about the consequences. In short health promotion helps in cultivating the health of an individual by taking certain steps. It means building health educational works in society by teaching people why it is necessary to be healthy.

References

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