Health Intervention Program For Obesity Prevention Essay.

Propose a health intervention, project, or program for your chosen health issue.

At this point, you have chosen a health theory, conducted a review of the recent literature and created an annotated bibliography, created goals and objectives for your program , and reflected and revised those goals to be culturally sensitive

Complications related to Obesity

Obesity is the healthcare issue, which had proved to be a major healthcare burden in the present generation in all the developed nation in the world and USA is not an exception. The prevalence of obesity is found to be 39.8% and the health issue had affected for about 93.3 million of US adults in the nation. Obesity is mainly characterized by increased weight gain of individuals above the safe level that makes individuals prone to various kinds of the chronic ailments (Enright et al., 2016). Basal metabolic index can be explained as the weight to height ratio of the individuals and the value can provide us with the health status of individual. When the basal metabolic index of an individual is found to be between 25 to 30, the individuals are seen to be overweight and when the same is above 30, the individual is said to be obese.

Huge number of complications remains associated with obesity. Studies have linked obesity with various kinds of chronic disorders like cardiovascular disorders, diabetes and even osteoarthritis. Apart from that, the disorder also gives rise to gastroesophagal complexes, chronic lower back pain, sleep disorders, respiratory issues, specific types of cancer and many others. Psychological problems also remain intricately associated with the disorders that are seen to include social stigmatization and even depression (Giles et al., 2016). Therefore, it is important for the healthcare professionals to help people develop awareness about the disorder and undertake interventions that help them to prevent the development of the disorder.

Two main factors are responsible for giving rise to chances of development of obesity. Sedentary lifestyles with absence of physical activities in regular lifestyle are one important factor. This prevents burning of excess calories in the body and helps in maintaining weight. Another factor is the consumption of the calorie-genic unhealthy food. This results in direct increase in calorie content of the body without providing adequate nutrition required by the body. Therefore, the interventions and the health promotion strategies that need to be developed should target these two healthcare habits appropriately so that the prevalence can be reduced in the nation (Hollands et al., 2016).

One important concept that the healthcare professionals need to cover is the consideration of multicultural and diversity components while developing health-promotion initiatives. Different initiatives should cover social analysis and development of cultural awareness about the population cohort among which the health promotion initiatives need to be administered. Different people from different cultures have their own literacy levels, cultural preferences, traditions and inhibitions. Therefore, professionals need to be aware of them so that they can ensure culturally competent interventions that align with the expectations of people with different cultures (Davis et al., 2015). Researchers are of the opinion that about 47.0% of the Hispanics and 46.85 of the non-Hispanics blacks are seen to have the highest prevalence of the age-adjusted obesity. On the other hand, the prevalence of obesity in the non-Hispanic whites is about 37.9% whereas non-Hispanic Asians are about 12.7%.  Hence, nurses need to be aware of the cultural traditions and preferences of all while developing health promotion initiatives to ensure best outcome and alignment of the population with the suggested interventions.

Factors contributing to Obesity

Goal 1: Increase of health literacy levels as well as awareness among the community members for providing encouragement to the participants for modifying their health habits and behaviors like ensuring development of good habits and lifestyle changes.

Objective 1: Within March 2019, enough health education sessions would be conducted in community halls for teaching participants about the causes and complications that related to obesity. 70% of the community members would be well aware about how their behaviors contribute to obese conditions and the ways they can adapt to prevent occurrences of obesity. Survey data will be conducted to measure the outputs about health literacy development.

Objective 2: Distribution of the pamphlets, flyers and brochures that would help them to gain knowledge about the specific foods they should take and those they should avoid along with the physical activities and the time duration that should be undertaken. Within the month of February 2019, a survey would be conducted to understand how the education materials had been useful to the participants in developing their awareness.  

Goal 2: Advocate to the government to develop policies and legislation for regulating and controlling inappropriate advertisements that influence unhealthy behaviors encouraging obesity.

Objective 1: the healthcare professionals would be conducting a social and statistical analysis of the people affected by obesity in the cohorts and sending the reports to government so that they can understand how inappropriate advertisements on television and social media can result in poor lifestyle choices leading to obesity. This would be done within November 2018. This will help them to develop good healthcare policies to prevent obesity.

Objective 2: the healthcare promoters would be advocating about how the youths of the nation is being influenced by inappropriate advertisements on media and develop legislations and laws for banning such advertisements, posing strict penalties for those who break the rules. This would be done within December 2018.

Goal 3: Rallying the government for developing policies that would discourage fast food selling and make organic food cheaper in the communities

Objective 1: Collecting data about the consumption level of fast food and organic food by the community members so that the prevalence of the selling and availability of fast foods and organic foods can be made known to the government. This would be done within 22^nd December 2018.

Objective 2: government need to take strict actions against brands who are selling calorie dense fast foods, pass legislations to prevent their selling or increase their price so that less people afford them and make organic food available at cheaper rate. This would be done by February, 2019.

Importance of cultural awareness in health-promotion initiatives

Health behavior theories can often guide healthcare professionals to develop the principles on which the health promotion strategies would be based. One of the important health behavior theories that need to be covered is the direct modeling theory. This theory is because individuals observe others in their social network and then engage in the particular behaviors and tend to copy or adapt to the behaviors. Often some of the advertisements that are given on social media and televisions and radios and lifestyles of the people lead in the neighborhood can influence the behaviors of others. Hence, all should be educated about proper lifestyles that reduce the risk of obesity (Kaplan & Miller, 2017). Another health behavior therapy that can be also followed in the health belief model. This model is a psychological model that attempts to explain and predict health behaviors. This is mainly achieved by focusing on the attitudes and beliefs of the affected person and modifying them to develop positive expectations by taking up recommended actions. The goals and objectives were set with the principles of these two health behavior models.

The first intervention would include educating patient about risky behaviors that lead to occurrence of obesity. Once they develop awareness about the cause and factors that lead to obesity and understand proper lifestyle changes that can reduce the chances of obesity, they would become careful. Therefore, health education classes and pamphlets distribution would be developed for making people develop their health care knowledge and literacy. The second intervention includes developing policies and legislations by the government for preventing advertisements, blogs and articles on television, radio and social media that promote unhealthy behaviors. Often people, mainly children, teenagers and youth are highly influenced by information shared on this medium and they can undertake such unhealthy lifestyle practices. Hence, such policy development would prevent promotion of such resources on media and prevent the population from being influenced. This would help to change their healthcare habits. The third intervention would be advocating to the government to prevent the sale of calorie-dense unhealthy fast foods and promote organic food consumptions that are nutrient dense. Usually present generation tendencies show people to opt for fast foods, as they are cheaper and easier to have for both low socio-economic class of people and for those who remain busy in their lives (Hollands et al., 2016). These would be prevented if government ensures policy development to control such habits of people successfully.

References:

Davis, R., Campbell, R., Hildon, Z., Hobbs, L., & Michie, S. (2015). Theories of behavior and behavior change across the social and behavioral sciences: a scoping review. Health psychology review, 9(3), 323-344.https://doi.org/10.1080/17437199.2014.941722

Enright, G., Gyani, A., Raadsma, S., Allman-Farinelli, M., Rissel, C., Innes-Hughes, C., ... & Redfern, J. (2016). Evaluating factors influencing the delivery and outcomes of an incentive-based behavior change strategy targeting child obesity: protocol for a qualitative process and impact evaluation. BMJ Open, 6(12), e012536. https://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2016-012536

Giles, E. L., Sniehotta, F. F., McColl, E., & Adams, J. (2016). Acceptability of financial incentives for health behavior changes to public health policymakers: A qualitative study. BMC Public Health, 16(1), 989. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-016-3646-0

Hollands, G. J., French, D. P., Griffin, S. J., Prevost, A. T., Sutton, S., King, S., & Marteau, T. M. (2016). The impact of communicating genetic risks of disease on risk-reducing health behavior: a systematic review with meta-analysis. BMJ, 352, i1102. doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.i1102

Hughes, S. A., & Berry, T. R. (2012). Significance of Diversity and multicultural perspective within public health. In The evolving significance of race: Living, learning, and teaching (pp. 123-125). New York: Peter Lang.

Kaplan, M., & Miller, A. T. (2017). Multiple perspectives before beginning an intervention. In Scholarship of multicultural teaching and learning (pp. 23-27). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.