Health Promotion for Obese Children Assignment Sample

• Subject Name : Nursing

Introduction to Health Promotion for Obese Children

According to Innstrand et al. (2020), holistic planning means the patient receives care with a focus on five main aspects of personal health like intellectual, social, spiritual, emotional, and physical. The principles of this approach include treatment and prevention, the healing power of love, the goal of optimal health, relationship-centered care, integration of healthcare professionals, and many others. There is a need for health promotion to enhance the quality of life and reduce the chances of premature deaths. With the health of health promotion, the affected individual gets the information to manage his/her lifestyle to improve health. This paper will discuss the effect of obesity on the target population, the effects of the behavior change model, and the effects of health education principles for health promotion.

Obesity in The Target Population and Its Prevalence

Childhood obesity affects the physical and psychological health of obese or overweight children. Such children face many complications like affected peer relationships, reduces self-confidence, sleep disorders that ultimately resulting in their improper school activities. They grow up into obsess adults with associated health issues like diabetes, cardiovascular problems, and other health issues (Chan, 2014). According to the World health organization (2020), in 2019, millions of children (38.9 million) aged 5 years were obese. The signs and symptoms of obesity are potbellies, overweight, pain in the back, or joints. Under the age of 5, the number of children who were obese in 2019 is - 38 million. In 2016, more than 340 million children under the age group of 5-16 years were overweight or obese. It was found that worldwide the cases if childhood obesity is creasing very quickly especially in low and medium-income countries.

According to the (AIHW) Australian Institute of health and welfare (2020), in Australia from 2017 to 2018, 24% of children under the age group of 5–14 years were obese, accounting for a percentage of 7.7% and 17% respectively. Children living in a remote area or regional area were more likely to be obese or overweight (29%) than children living in major cities (23%). For example, in Tasmania, there are many cases of obesity. The major reason for their obesity and being overweight is the energy imbalance between calories consumed and calories expenditure. High sugar and fat-containing energy-dense foods are increasingly eaten by the children causing them to be overweight and obese. An important factor is a sedentary lifestyle resulting in physical inactivity and an overweight child. Moreover, in Tasmania, the children have less education, poor health, poor economic status, poor employment rates, and poor access to health care services as well and these factors contribute to their poor health.

Impact of Health Belief Model

According to Abdeyazdan et al. (2017), the health belief model is a model that guides disease prevention and health promotion programs. It is widely used to understand health behaviors and predict and explain individual changes in health behavior. This model is used for obesity-associated health promotion for children. For this, the perceived susceptibility which includes the child’s assessment is performed; this gives information about the chances of the child developing the disease. For this, the child and their parents are educated for self-susceptibility for signs and symptoms. Perceived severity – educating and informing the child and their parents so that they know about the severity levels of their obesity and associated health issues. Perceived benefits and cues to action – it involves videos, communication strategies, or testimonials for obese children and their parents so that they take part in healthy behavior adoption.

In this way, with theoretical education, the obese child is encouraged towards health promotion and health education in schools or community programs (Urbanovich et al., 2020). In this, the child in schools and public programs are educated about multiple unhealthy behaviors with a focus on self-management for their obesity. Through such programs, the child is attracted and the participants are intervened after regular intervals for their behavior until the completion of the program of health coaching. The children were educated about more physical activities like exercises or physical games, and less unhealthy food intake so that there is a reduction in their body fat and improved body health wit reduced weight (Cullen et al., 2017).

Lifestyle Medicine Recommendations

This obesity issue can be resolved by restricting the intake of unhealthy food items, reducing the intake of salt, sugar, and fat-containing processed food, increasing the encouragement of healthy food, or supporting physical activities at schools/workplaces (Sittig et al., 2020). Moreover, improved pregnancy care should be ensured at the parents’ end to prevent genetic or obesity-related issues with birth. The child should be given whole-grain products for diet, encouraged for 8 glasses of water every day, and the child should be encouraged for developing healthy food choices (Garvey, 2019). Moreover, the family should organize fun family physical activities for the healthy behavior of the child.

Health Promotion Principles and Holistic Health Promotion

For the development of the brochure, the health promotion principles involve positive and broad health concept, this is ensured by choosing an entire obese child group as a target for health promotion. Involvement and participation - It was also ensured that the target population is actively involved by interacting them in their schools, localities, and other public places like churches promotion (Waters et al., 2019). Action - It was ensured that there are interventions after every few weeks for evaluation of a child’s behavior towards health. Equity – equal opportunities were ensured for the target child population for access to this health education and health promotion (Waters et al., 2019). Moreover, in health literacy - the child and their parents were educated about the benefits of healthy lifestyles, disadvantages, and complications of obesity. The brochure enabled holistic care because it ensured psychosocial like stress or anxiety and cultural considerations like language barriers. The obese child is harassed or often made fun of due to their overweight physique (Blum, 2020). This brochure of health promotion ensured that social support is increased for such children by making the society aware of the issue so that the child does not suffer from anxiety or stress/depression. Moreover, it is also ensured that during health promotion there were no language barrier issues, and children are explained the disease and its prevention behavior aspects in very simple language.

Conclusion on Health Promotion for Obese Children

The target population is a high risk of cardiovascular health issues so, it is important to perform a health promotion for them. The brochure is also used for health education and health promotion of the target population for holistic care. In this holistic planning, health promotion is performed with the health of the use of the health belief model. It is also ensured that health literacy with effective lifestyle recommendations is provided to the target population. It should always be ensured that the interventions are performed timely to assess the changed healthy behavior of the target population.

References for Health Promotion for Obese Children

Abdeyazdan, Z., Moshgdar, H., & Golshiri, P. (2017). Evaluating the effect of lifestyle education based on health belief model for mothers of obese and overweight school-age children on obesity-related behaviors. Journal of Nursing and Midwifery Research, 22(3), 248. https://dx.doi.org/10.4103%2F1735-9066.208163

Australian Institute of health and welfare. (2020). Australia's children. Retrieved from: https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/children-youth/australias-children/contents/health/overweight-and-obesity

Blum, J. D. (2020). Equity and health care: The case of obesity. International Journal of Health Law and Government Policy, 3(2), 204-211. Retrieved from: http://jurnal.pancabudi.ac.id/index.php/healthlaw/article/view/753

Chan, M. (2014). WHO on child obesity and nutrition. Retrieved from: https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/research-videos/2014-05-30-who-on-child-obesity-and-nutrition.html

Cullen, A. J., Barnett, A., Komesaroff, P. A., Brown, W., O'Brien, K. S., Hall, W., & Carter, A. (2017). A qualitative study of overweight and obese Australians' views of food addiction. Appetite, 115, 62-70. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2017.02.013

Garvey, W. T. (2019). Core principles, treatment standards, and provider competencies for the care of patients with obesity. Obesity, 27(7), 1045-1047. https://doi.org/10.1002/oby.22538

Innstrand, S. T., & Christensen, M. (2020). Healthy universities: The development and implementation of a holistic health promotion intervention programme especially adapted for staff working in the higher educational sector: The ARK study. Global Health Promotion, 27(1), 68-76. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1757975918786877

Sittig, S., McGowan, A., & Iyengar, S. (2020). Extensive review of persuasive system design categories and principles: Behavioral obesity interventions. Journal of Medical Systems, 44, 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-020-01591-w

Urbanovich, T., & Bevan, J. L. (2020). Promoting environmental behaviors: Applying the health belief model to diet change. Environmental Communication, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2019.1702569

Waters, E., Gibbs, L., Tadic, M., Ukoumunne, O. C., Magarey, A., Okely, A. D., & Johnson, B. (2018). Cluster randomised trial of a school-community child health promotion and obesity prevention intervention: Findings from the evaluation of fun ‘n healthy. BMC Public Health, 18(1), 92. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-017-4625-9

WHO. (2020). Obesity and overweight. Retrieved from: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/obesity-and-overweight

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