Childhood Obesity: Literature, Policy and Implications for Practice

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Childhood obesity: Current Literature, Policy and Implications for Practice

Childhood obesity has become a global health concern with children as young as six years old have been reported by various organizations including World Health Organization (WHO) to be obese. While the many world countries have numerous differences in terms of culture, they share one thing in common: the causes of obesity. To reverse this worrying trend, there is need for medical practitioners directly involved with child issues to take up active roles. Nurses and mid-wives can ensure that parents follow proper nutritional regime before and after birth. Apart from acting as role models for proper nutritional practices, they can also liaise with school staffs to ensure that children take balanced diets while at school. Moreover, they should be involved in the formulation of policies by the government that will help in curbing this vice while at the same time incorporating technology such as blogs and chat rooms to answer questions from parents concerning obesity (Ben-Sefer, Ben-Natan & Ehrenfeld, 2009).

Get Fit with the Grizzlies: A Community-School-Home Initiative to Fight Childhood Obesity

In their effort to curb obesity, stakeholders have come up with a raft of measures but have excluded a very important aspect of the American society; the children’s and even adults’ love for sports’ celebrities. The schools’ communities should include these celebrities from the schools’ vicinity in their fitness programs. This will motivate the children to take up healthy living behaviors as these celebrities will act as their role models. However, this initiative has been tapped by few thus the various stakeholders should encourage it as it has proved to be very effective in Memphis City schools (Irwin, 2010).

When two sides go to war: Newspaper reporting of ‘television food advertising restrictions’ as a solution to childhood obesity

While it is a widely acceptable view that the media has big role in promoting childhood obesity through advertisement of unhealthy foods especially during children programs, quite a good percentage of media outlets do not support the proposed restriction on television advertisement of food. However, quite a good too warmed up to the idea and even proposed new measures including formulation of healthy eating policies, creation of supportive environment for physical activity and healthy eating. Moreover, the media can also help in fast tracking of the progress of this debate thereby pointing out how important they are in curbing childhood obesity (Udell & Mehta, 2008).

Public Health Professionals as Policy Entrepreneurs: Arkansas’s Childhood Obesity Policy Experience

Childhood obesity is a national concern which requires proper legislations to curb. However, these policies may not be popular with many politicians who are the policy makers. It is therefore the duty of the public health professionals to present their policies in a clear and concise way that can be accepted by the politicians like in the case of Arkansas. These professionals should look for a window of opportunity in terms of political parties’ ideology changes among others and present these new policies and lobby for them to be passed. If practiced, such multiple streams framework approaches will help in curbing childhood obesity (Craig, 2010).

Early Childhood Poverty, Cumulative Risk Exposure and Body Mass Index Trajectories through Young Adulthood

Conducted between 1995 and 2006 in poor rural areas by interviewing children aged between 9 and 17 years with a view of determining whether early childhood poverty had a bearing on the prevalence of obesity, the study showed that exposure to poverty at an early age is a predisposing factor in weight gain. This trend of weight gain begins from childhood and continues into early adulthood if not checked (Wells, 2010).

Parents’ perception and attitudes on childhood obesity: A Q-methodology

Even though parents are at the center stage of childhood obesity, many of them do not fully comprehend its causes, consequences and ways of curbing it. This study whose results was a wakeup call to the nurses to teach and create awareness on childhood obesity, showed that some parents were not aware of the role of physical activity in curbing childhood obesity. Some also concentrated only on good nutrition or physical activity while quite a good number understood the need to combine both in curbing childhood obesity (Akhtar-Danesh, 2011).

Association of Childhood Obesity with Atopic and Nonatopic Asthma: Results from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999 – 2006

Based on data from the survey conducted between 1999 and 2006 aimed at finding the relationship between childhood obesity and atopic and nontoxic asthma, the study found that there was a relationship between obesity and asthma in obese children. In most cases, asthma is caused by allergic reactions, but non-allergic obese children had elevated levels of asthma prevalence. Moreover, monatomic obese children recorded higher prevalence of asthma thereby leading to a conclusion that obesity predisposes obese children to asthma (Visness, 2010).

Association between childhood obesity and subsequent Type 1 diabetes: a systemic review and meta-analysis

Type 1 diabetes and childhood obesity are public health concerns plunging many countries today. Many scholars have always associated the two and thus this study conducted by accessing data from the PubMed database and various results from diagnosis of obesity and type 1 diabetes, aimed at confirming or refuting the association. After studying over 2600 cases, the study found out that there was indeed a strong association between childhood obesity and type 1 diabetes with childhood obesity being a predisposing factor to type 1 diabetes (Verbeeten, 2011).

School Nurses and Childhood Obesity: An Investigation of Knowledge and Practice among School Nurses as they Relate to Childhood Obesity

Even though children spent quite a great deal of their time in schools, a study carried out in New Jersey showed that at least 35% of the 103 school nurses surveyed where not competent enough to ensure that the children followed a fitness program. More worrying though is the 65% who admitted they either did not calculate obesity using the age-specific, rarely did it or just did it occasionally (Nauta, Byrne & Wesley, 2009).

References

Akhtar-Danesh, N., et al. (2011). “Parents’ perception and attitudes on childhood obesity: A Q-methodology”. Journal of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners 23: 67 – 75.

Ben-Sefer, E., Ben-Natan, M. & Ehrenfeld, M. (2009). “Childhood obesity: Current Literature, Policy and Implications for Practice”. International Nursing Review 56: 166 – 173.

Craig, R. et al. (2010). “Public Health Professionals as Policy Entrepreneurs: Arkansas’s Childhood Obesity Policy Experience”. Am J Public Health 100: 2047 – 2052.

Irwin, C. et al. (2010). “Get Fit with the Grizzlies: A Community-School-Home Initiative to Fight Childhood Obesity”. J Sch Health 80: 333 – 339.

Nauta, C., Byrne, C. & Wesley, Y. (2009). “School Nurses and Childhood Obesity: An Investigation of Knowledge and Practice among School Nurses as they relate to Childhood Obesity”. Issues in Comprehensive Pediatric Nursing 32: 16 – 30.

Udell, T. & Mehta, K. (2008). “When two sides go to war: Newspaper reporting of ‘television food advertising restrictions’ as a solution to childhood obesity”. Health, Risk & Society 10 (6): 535 – 548.

Verbeeten, K., et al. (2011). “Association between childhood obesity and subsequent Type 1 diabetes: a systemic review and meta-analysis”. Diabetic Medicine 28: 10 – 18.

Visness, C., et al. (2010). “Association of Childhood Obesity with Atopic and Nonatopic Asthma: Results from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999 – 2006”. Journal of Asthma 47: 822 – 829.

Wells, N., et al. (2010). “Early Childhood Poverty, Cumulative Risk Exposure and Body Mass Index Trajectories through Young Adulthood”. Am J Public Health 100 (12): 2507 – 2512.

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