Preventing And Managing Obesity In The United States: A Health Promotion Essay.

Using your chosen health problem from your case Module 4: Mission Statement, Goals and Objectives.
Conduct a literature need assessment.

Based on your needs assessment, please write the mission statement, the goals, and the objectives of your program. What strategies, and types of interventions would you use? What settings would you use for your program?

Would you involve the community in your health promotion program? If so, how? How would you take into account the cultural norms and the diversity within your community? How would you implement the program? What specific concerns may you have with this program? How would your program be funded and what personnel would you use? Would you use social marketing techniques? If so, what?

What theory you will use in your planning, implementing, and evaluating your Health Promotion Program. How do behavior and the environment influence health and how does health promotion take both into account?

Unhealthy diet, drug abuse and lack of physical activities in the modern United States have been attributed to the rise of a myriad of health issues. According to the Centres for disease control and prevention, the obesity prevalence in 2016 was at 39.9 in which 93.8 million American adults were affected (Hales, Carroll, Fryar & Ogden, 2017). Most affected were adults aged between 20 and 39. Obesity is associated with some of the leading causes of premature death among Americans including some types of cancer, type 2 Diabetes, stroke and heart disease (Hales, Carroll, Fryar & Ogden, 2017). It is therefore considered to be a serious health risk costing the USA taxpayers a huge amount of money. In 2008 for example, the average medical cost of obesity in the USA was $147 billion. This health promotion plan focuses on the monitoring, prevention, and reduction of Obesity in the USA.

The mission statement of this promotion plan is to monitor the increase and prevalence of Obesity in the United States through a series of interventions and Strategies.

• To identify the various ways of managing and preventing Obesity among the American population
• To identify the risk factors and consequences of Obesity in the United States of America
• To identify and assess the causes of Obesity

Effective management of obesity will involve support for an active living and healthy eating among various populations. Some of the major causes of obesity have been identified as lack of physical exercises and unhealthy eating habits. Effective control and management of obesity, therefore, require the inclusion of physical exercises and healthy living habits in people’s daily routine. Public education on the need for living a healthy lifestyle and exercising regularly will be one of the strategies to be used. This will also include creating awareness of the possible risk factors and Consequences of Obesity (Bauer, Briss, Goodman & Bowman, 2014). Other aspects of this public awareness strategy will include education on the need for high intake of fruits and vegetables, avoidance of high-density foods and creating an understanding of intake portions for various types of foods.

Lack of accessibility for high fiber, low fat, and healthy foods and increased accessibility of high cholesterol foods is one of the main reasons for the persistent increase in the cases of Obesity in America. Part of the prevention and management of obesity will also include advocating for policies that promote access to healthy food types and control the production and sale of unhealthy food types (Walker, Keane & Burke, 2010).

This setting will be ideal for this program because most children in the Country spend more time in ECE Centres. Research has shown one out of every five children aged between five and two in the USA to be Obese (Cheung, Cunningham, Narayan & Kramer, 2016). It is also estimated that 60% of children aged 3-5 spend much time in non-parental care every week, with over eleven million children aged below six spending more than 30 hrs in non-parental care weekly (Story, Nanney & Schwartz, 2009).

The number of patients served by hospitals in the United States is estimated to be more than 480 million people every year(Hales, Carroll, Fryar & Ogden, 2017). This number comprises employees, employers, regular patients and other visitors who can have an impact on their families, organizations, and communities. Hospitals can come up with policies centered on increasing physical activity and improving dietary choices. This, therefore, makes it an ideal setting for obesity prevention strategies and intervention.

Goals and objectives of the program

The community is an important stakeholder in this program. Communities’ play an important role in the lifestyles lived by individuals. Communities understand who among their members are at high risk and other aspects related to the Obesity Epidemic. The involvement of the comm. Unity will, therefore, be mandatory.

Successful implementation of the program will involve the adoption of community-based interventions designed for various communities in the United States. These will be tailored to meet the specific cultural needs and health priorities of different communities in America. The adoption of community-based implementation framework will be an effective strategy in countering the prevalence of Obesity (Kahan, 2016).

The program is focused on a significant part of the population including people with obesity and those without. The implementation of the program will, therefore, need a substantial amount of resources both financial and human resources. Some of the concerns with the program, therefore, include the financial and human resources concerns as well as issues to do with its sustainability.

The program will be funded through the federal government’s grants and programs such as Medicaid and Medicare program (McCoy, Chand & Sridhar, 2009).

Apart from the government funds for the implementation of the program will also be raised through fundraising. This process will involve soliciting for donations from well-wishers and sponsorships by both individuals and organizations (McCoy, Chand & Sridhar, 2009).

Health care personnel and Sociologists will be used in the implementation of the program

Social marketing focuses on creating social change among people through the use of commercial marketing techniques and principles. It is a long-term approach that is carefully planned to enhance a change in human behavior. This particular program is designed to enhance behavioral change regarding people’s lifestyles, dietary choices and physical activities (Anda & Temmen, 2018). The use of social marketing technique will, therefore, be ideal.

Health belief theoretical model will be used. This model is one of the most widely used in understanding people’s health behaviors and guiding disease prevention and health promotion programs. It works by predicting and explaining people’s health behaviors (Green & Murphy, 2014).

Their social environment directly influences the ability of people to initiate and maintain healthy behaviors. The environment affects behaviors such as stress management, consumption of alcohol, smoking, dietary choices and physical activities (Sallis, Owen & Fisher,2015). This program will take these aspects into account by adopting strategies and interventions suitable for different populations.

The success of the program will be evaluated based on the statistics of People with Obesity in America after its implementation. A declining trend will signify a success of the program while lack of change in the current numbers or an increase will be used to signify a failure of the program (Roberto. et al.,2015 ).

Conclusion:

In conclusion, this health promotion is designed to help minimize the prevalence of Obesity among the American population. Community efforts will be used to meet the specific needs of the various American communities. Policy interventions will also be used to increase the accessibility and affordability of high fiber, low fat, and healthy foods. Some of the settings to be considered include hospitals and schools. The community will also be highly involved to enhance the success of the program. Some of the concerns with the program include sufficient funding and inadequacy of personnel to implement the program. Funds for the programs will be raised through the federal government’s programs and fundraising from sponsors and well-wishers. Due to its effectiveness in driving behavioral change, social marketing technique will be used. Finally, the success of the program will be evaluated based on the overall trend in Obesity Statistics in the USA.

References:

Anda, M., & Temmen, J. (2014). Smart metering for residential energy efficiency: The use of community-based social marketing for behavioral change and smart grid introduction. Renewable energy, 67, 119-127.

Bauer, U. E., Briss, P. A., Goodman, R. A., & Bowman, B. A. (2014). Prevention of chronic disease in the 21st century: elimination of the leading preventable causes of premature death and disability in the USA. The Lancet, 384(9937), 45-52.

Cheung, P. C., Cunningham, S. A., Narayan, K. V., & Kramer, M. R. (2016). Childhood obesity incidence in the United States: a systematic review. Childhood Obesity, 12(1), 1-11.

Green, E. C., & Murphy, E. (2014). Health belief model. The Wiley Blackwell encyclopedia of health, illness, behavior, and society, 766-769.

Hales, C. M., Carroll, M. D., Fryar, C. D., & Ogden, C. L. (2017). Prevalence of obesity among adults and youth: the United States, 2015–2016.

Kahan, S. (2016). Overweight and obesity management strategies. The American journal of managed care, 22(7 Suppl), s186-96.

McCoy, D., Chand, S., & Sridhar, D. (2009). Global health funding: how much, where it comes from and where it goes. Health policy and planning, 24(6), 407-417.

Roberto, C. A., Swinburn, B., Hawkes, C., Huang, T. T., Costa, S. A., Ashe, M., ... & Brownell, K. D. (2015). Patchy progress on obesity prevention: emerging examples, entrenched barriers, and new thinking. The Lancet, 385(9985), 2400-2409.

Sallis, J. F., Owen, N., & Fisher, E. (2015). Ecological models of health behavior. Health behavior: Theory, research, and practice, 5, 43-64.

The story, M., Nanney, M. S., & Schwartz, M. B. (2009). Schools and obesity prevention: creating school environments and policies to promote healthy eating and physical activity. The Milbank Quarterly, 87(1), 71-100.

Walker, R. E., Keane, C. R., & Burke, J. G. (2010). Disparities and access to healthy food in the United States: A review of food deserts literature. Health & place, 16(5), 876-884.