Childhood Obesity Research Essay

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Introduction

Obesity in children is a global epidemic with numbers growing fast in need of action to be put in place. Different policies have been put in place by different countries worldwide touching marketing, economy, schools, etc. to reverse the climbing numbers. The purpose of this research is to determine the information data collected in order to manage and find the treatment of child obesity in school settings and clinical settings. With the question of childhood obesity, this research will look at how to educate parents and societies when it comes to obesity and ways to prevent it. In, the efforts that were put before did not meet the goal of remarkably reducing the number of obese children and preventing more children from falling into this category or health condition. Physical activities have been encouraged in young children especially youth in the past years; nevertheless, this is not adequate and should simultaneously work hand in hand with altering food choices. Some policies have been introduced by the legislature and set in place, but more policies should be applied to implement healthier eating habits and lifestyles. Educating society about obesity and how to tackle the situation very early is very important. Learning the physical, emotional, and mental implications that it has on a child should be made a priority. Creating posters in schools or in education settings can help educate and make the children think about what they eat and maybe have the urge to eat healthy foods and snacks. All of these scenarios can help create awareness and also benefits the children as a whole. The government has created a plan for action when it comes to childhood obesity which consists of things like introducing soft drinks industry levy, taking out 20% of sugar in products, supporting innovation to help businesses to make their products healthier, developing a new framework by updating the nutrients profile model, making healthy options available in the public sector, continuing to provide support with the cost of healthy food for those who need it most, helping all children to enjoy an hour of physical activity every day, creating a new healthy rating scheme for primary schools, making school food healthier, clearer food labeling, supporting early years settings, enabling health professionals to support families, harnessing the best new technology and improving the coordination of the quality sport and physical activity program for school (Gov, UK, 2017).

Rationale

The reason for this research is to find ways to educate parents and society in general on how to prevent and raise awareness of obesity in children. The number of children that have obese has become alarmingly high. Creating posters in schools or in an educational setting can help educate and make the children think about what they eat and maybe have the urge to eat healthy foods and snacks. All of these scenarios can help create awareness and also benefits the children as a whole. The government has created a plan for action when it comes to childhood obesity which consists of things like introducing soft drinks industry levy, taking out 20% of sugar in products, supporting innovation to help businesses to make their products healthier, developing a new framework by updating the nutrients profile model, making healthy options available in the public sector, continuing to provide support with the cost of healthy food for those who need it most, helping all children to enjoy an hour of physical activity every day, creating a new healthy rating scheme for primary schools, making school food healthier, clearer food labeling, supporting early years settings, enabling health professionals to support families, harnessing the best new technology and improving the coordination of the quality sport and physical activity program for school (Gov, UK, 2017). This research will try to find out the best treatment for childhood obesity in order to increase the life expectancy of the affected children and less the burden on the National Health Services.

Research question

The question is ‘how does obesity affect children’ Deciding where the responsibility falls in regards to making sure a healthy life for a child is a priority, is the first ethical concern. Asking questions like do the caregivers, parents, guardians, communities as a whole, etc take responsibility for the children. Are they willing to put them on a healthier diet? Making sure healthy eating habits are encouraged? and considering putting an effort into preventing child obesity. when we look at the obese children that were looked after the pediatric doctors within ten years (2012-2020), the children received treatment by pediatric doctors which includes psychologists (clinical) and a dietician. For example, the research was done by the Midlands Adolescents School sleep education Study (MASSES), ‘the researchers recruited around 800 11-12-year-olds from nine secondary schools in the Midlands. They are following the children for three years, gathering data that will help answer their questions (Action, 2011). The researchers were trying to find out why so many teenagers and young children were becoming obese in such a big number. A quantitative was used to determine the results. Questionnaires were used to collect data and results on this research, as well as collecting data on this research. They measured BMI scores in one of the communities. It was found that 25.5% increase in nutrition knowledge. A limitation of this study was that study lay on classroom and physical education teachers to gather data and implement the programming, they did not always see the value in the research and often had a conflict with scheduling programs around the pre-existing curriculum (Sanders et al., 2015)

Aim

The aim of this research is to show how efficient the questionnaire approach (both quantitative and qualitative methods as they take yes or no answers to a rating scale i.e.. 1-10) is and to determine whether different methods would give different answers when it comes to children’s in school BMI scores comparing to different age groups. The questionnaire method will provide the true results in both numerical and measurable evidence. The purpose is also to examine the literature and identify different approaches according to the evidence for treatment and obesity in children in mainly primary care. Placing the question forward in primary schools and early secondary schools, ‘How does obesity affect young children and the consequences of it? The findings that will be found will lower the presence of obesity in young children especially those in their early years. Furthermore, to find out what is the best solution treatment that will solve this big problem and to find out the long-term solution and longer life expectancy of the children. As well as major diseases associated with childhood obesity continue to be on high, the disease can cause extreme emotional health to a child. Discrimination and bullying are the main and worrying effects that an obese child has to deal with. Because of the weight an obese child would find it hard to participate in physical activities because of shortness of breath. A child who is obese would shut down and not want to involve themselves with other children because of being bullied or picked on. In most cases, this is where the bullying and discrimination start. These feelings continue to affect a child’s emotions and also put some effect on a child’s psyche growing up.

Method

Questionnaires would be appropriate for this research method. ‘A questionnaire is a specific tool or instrument for collecting the data. Designing a questionnaire means creating valid and reliable questions that address your research objectives, placing them in a useful order, and selecting an appropriate method for administration’ Scribbr 2021). I choose this method because it provides privacy, and cost efficiency as it is very cheap and quick to make. Having a choice of either distributing them in person or online. It can be customized to my own liking, I can choose how I want it to be distributed, what kind of questions I can put in it, and have a choice of making it long or short, putting pictures in it, etc. For example in this research, a Printed questionnaire would be provided to the young children and the parents of younger children in school settings or the clinic while visiting the setting, in the clinic setting the trained clinician and a person who does the research would take the height, weight, and the BMI to determine the answers. The relationship between BMI, demographic factors, and the results of the questionnaires about physical activities and eating behavior would be analyzed. The questions on the questionnaire would help to collect the necessary data to quantify the results. Then the results will be applied in to statistics i.e., mean, more, or frequency to outline the collected information. Using a questionnaire as a method of collecting data has its advantages, here are some examples, advantages of using this method include greater validity, anonymity, economical, wide coverage, it is rapid, repetitive information, puts less pressure on the respondent and it is the most flexible tool for data collection. The disadvantage of this method is lack of personal contact, the possibility of manipulated entries, incomplete entries, illegibility, and unreliability.

Participants

This study will look at obese children, what is the cause, better habits of eating, exercise, and how to improve their self-esteem. The general school population especially ages 5 to 14 will be the main focus. Obesity in childhood is also described as ‘one of the most serious public health challenges of the 21st century. In 2016 WHO found that globally the number of overweight children under the age of 5 topped 41 million, and the number between ages 5 and 19 was 340 million’ Gila Lyons (2022) Obesity. if the current trend situation continues the number of obese children worldwide will increase to 70 million by 2025. Without intervention, obese children will more likely continue to be obese during childhood. Childhood obesity has become a predominant situation as numbers are only developing higher and higher. The pressing need for some kind of movement and looking for an effective method of public policy appears to be a positive choice of action; even though attention must be given to addressing the moral and ethical issues. A sample of a good number of children in different settings i.e. clinics or schools would include a high number of children aged between 5 and 18 with obesity with a BMI score that is on or above the 85th percentile. Those children who suffer from genetic diseases that affect body weight or the ones that have made only one visit to the setting (school or clinic) would be on exclusion criteria that have normal BMI or below 85th percentile. When participating in the study research a researcher would make sure that they have changed all the personal detail like address, names, etc. the researcher have to make sure that they protect everybody that has participated in the research and is fully appraised from any risk because of their involvement.

Procedure

The clear wording clarity and sustainability for the answers questionnaire about childhood obesity will be given to the group intended ie. The parents, carers, and the clinics. The intended individual would reply to the closed-ended questions (multiple choices, yes or no, etc.). then I will use the statistical analysis methods to test the familiarity between the variables.

Data Analysis

I will do a lot of research about obesity in childhood in writing, and different ideas that influential writers have come up with and try to understand their reasoning on how to deal with child obesity. This research will then expand deeper, to understand how to deal with child obesity.

Design

When planning the research and determining what the subject would be, the researcher would have what would be the convenient and effective way to get accurate information. A secondary data collection would be involved in gathering the information. For this research, a survey response would be the ideal way to gather the data. The reason I would use this secondary data is because it is cost-effective or sometimes free. For example, there are many sites online that hold data for people to view and use in the research. Search engines like google scholar, online library, etc. do provide previous researches that have been done before based on a specific topic. I could easily create a free account and use the search engine to look into a specific subject. The advantages of using secondary methods are faster research speed, low financial and time costs, faster research speed, easily and rapidly available data, and the ability to scale up results. The disadvantages can be the researcher has no control over secondary research, secondary research data is not exclusive, and secondary research data can be out of date.

Results

With the number of obese children on high to date, ‘the National Child Measurement Programme figures published today show the body mass index (BMI)classification rates for English children in reception and year 6 by age, sex, ethnicity, and region. The results show that 40.9% of children aged 10-11 are living with overweight and 25.5% are living with obesity. of children 4-5, 27.7% are living with overweight (including obesity), and 14.4%are living with obesity (Diabetes). Most children who are obese have been psychologically affected because of the huge burden brought by the stigma associated with obesity. if the health issue of childhood obesity is put forward to discuss public policies things like media especially social media will spotlight individuals who are obese and overweight. This spotlight will bring attention to the youth who are likely to experience stigma and bullying from their friends etc. In addition categorizing these children by BMI can tell who is obese or who is not obese and with the negative implications of the term. Stigma in society will rise if privacy concerns are not addressed. The stigma may be obstructing a factoring in getting action for public policy. Boyd Swinburn describes how stigma may be challenged to get a sufficient body of people to initiate movement, ‘indeed, the stigma associated with being obese means that the public constituency agitating for change is quite small. There is not a groundswell of overweight and obese people calling for action the pressure is predominantly coming from the professional sector. Therefore, it will be important for obesity prevention advocacy to combine with other like-minded ‘movements ‘to get policy action’ (Swinburn, 2008). Stigma takes the attention away from coming up with a solution and advocation for policies to be put in place in order to focus on excluding those who are obese. Children who are overweight or obese tend to build experience stigma which is damaging to their psychological health. This is not the only problem with stigma but it does not serve to draw people to advocate for changes.

Discussion and Conclusion

When completing the research about childhood obesity, I believe that I can give more information to parents that have children that are obese and educate society on how to tackle this pandemic. I will educate society and the parents even though, some primary care providers are very busy and will say that they need more time to see the patients. In my opinion, the only way to overcome this is to educate the service provider on the results that I have gained and answer all the questions that they have. The results that I will hold will change the way that societies, parents, and carers the way they raise their children when it comes to diet and physical activities, which will help their children from becoming obese.

To conclude, I will run a close reading and research on the whole topic of ‘Obese in children’ and make sure that the parents and carers know to deal with childhood obesity. I will not put a limit on my research and that way I can accomplish my goal. From this research, I have learned that obesity is preventable yet it become a worldwide epidemic.

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