Obesity in Australian Children A Working Health Promotion Initiative

Question: Discuss about theObesity in Australian Childrenfor aWorking Health Promotion Initiative. Answer: Introduction The term Obesity means fat and overweight in common parlance. In the medical terminology of the word, it means children who have a higher Body Mass Index as compared to normal. The definition of normalcy varies with age, body type, race and origin. The common understanding is obese children are more prone to diseases, like cardiovascular disorders, diabetes, cancer, certain non-communicable diseases, and psychological problems. The given assignment requires drawing up a program for the obese children of the Sydney area and means to tackle the obesity in them. The increased prevalence of obesity amongst the children is one of the major difficulties faced by Sydney today. The study is based out of the St George area of Sydney including Georges River Council and Bayside Council areas. This write-up tries to address the issue of obesity, right from the scratch. It deals with the reasons of cause for obesity, the control mechanisms, the practicality of implementation of the mechanisms, and the plans that can lead to achieve the same. The programs so designed cannot be a homogeneous whole as the nature and measure of obesity varies with age, region, ethnicity, etc. The endeavour requires integrating the efforts of a lot of parties, like the community, the government, the participants and the like. The efforts need to be coherent and well planned. They need to be medically accurate and time bound. The rectification process is slow and lengthy, spanning many years and lifelong for many cases. But the most difficult aspect is the convincing of the subject to the fact that they are obese and require special attention. The subject of the study being children, the challenge is even more profound. Discussion Childhood obesity is a very common factor dealt with amongst the young population. The problem is more acute in the developed nations. The situation has today taken the shape of a national problem in many countries with a very high percentage of children under 18 years turning out to be obese. It was studied in Sydney alone, that 200000 children below the age of 15 years age are obese, of which 20000 are below the age of 4 years. In 2007-08, National Health Survey found out that in the age bracket of 5 to 17 year old children, as much as 25% were obese. Sydney is plagued with adult as well as child obesity problems. Between 1985 and 1995 the number of obese children has more than doubled in Australia. The rate of increase of obesity was very rapid. A study conducted in 2010 amongst 8000 school kids was surveyed in Sydney (and rest of New South Wales) revealed that the number of obese children in the region was 25% in 2004, a steep rise from 10% in 1985. The significance of childhood obesity is in its nature to turn into adult obesity. The chances that an obese child will grow up to an obese adult vary between 25% 78%. (NSW Ministry of Health, 2016) Obesity affects a childs normal conduct of life. The child becomes fat and overweight and cannot conduct oneself in a normal manner. The weight causes inability in the child to be agile as the body strength cannot keep up with the weight the body is carrying. The lack of agility is coupled with tiredness. The carrying of excess body weight all the time drains out energy from the child quickly and makes the child tired. Hence, the overall impact is that the child is sloth and inactive. This gives rise to major social inclusion amongst other children of the same age bracket, which is not obese. These children play and run around easily and do whatever a normal child is expected to do. The obese children cannot keep up pace with these children and start to cocoon themselves from the rest. This gives rise to a mental exclusion. The mental exclusion creates situation where these children do not take part in the normal social activities other children are involved in, like playing, running around and others. The inability to perform shields them away from the rest. This leads to inferiority complex amongst the child. Issues Requiring Change In the aforementioned discussion it was seen that the obese children suffer from typical diseases that normal children do not suffer from. The diseases are generally non-communicable in nature, so to say, that they cannot be passed on from a child to another, by any means. Hence, prevention is not quarantining. It will be pertinent here to look into the nature of the disorders that arise due to obesity. They include cardiovascular problems, skeletal problems and muscular issues, cancer of certain types, sleep apnoea, diabetes and hypertension. These types of diseases even in adults are controllable and preventable, but may not necessarily be curable. The prevention includes change of lifestyle and food habits. The change is easier to bring about in adults as they are more conscious and considering their age, majority have already undergone the experience of the uncontrolled and now the controlled lifestyle somewhat get accepted. Moreover, the similar age bracket is already into a restricted lifestyle, brings easier acceptance. But for a child the situation is very different. The children see the peer group eating things they cannot do and not doing acidities they are required to do. This causes a psychological barrier. Also the child feels that this restricted lifestyle is forever to continue, at least in the near future, or the entire of school life. The other peer group members who are not obese have unlimited access to other activities and food. The counselling sessions for these children to make them accept the reality is very important. The challenge is to create the realisation, of what is in place of what it may have been or why it is so with me only kind of syndrome. (Jeffrey P Kop lan, 2005) The child also knows that once the obesity affects, it is there to stay for quite a number of years, and may be lifelong. This means that the obese child grows up to an obese adult. The child, in the process of growth, observes other obese adults and realises the challenges faced by the person in daily life. As the child grows up cognitive power of the child increases and the realisation start to become starker. Thus starts reducing the self esteem of the child and the increase indulgence in unscientific methods of weight control. The next level of commitment comes from the executive, who is expected to create an environment of supportive policies and programmes. The entire gamuts of things are designed towards achieving the behavioural change that the health practitioners expect within the child. The outcome is a metamorphosed social, economic and health environments. However, this model with not work unless there is continuous monitoring of the developments. The model may work on principles that support invention and create evidences that form the guiding principles for policies and programs to be drawn out and evaluated at a common level. The designing and evaluation happens at a professional level which has subject matter experts. They provide scientific and technical knowhow on the subject and advice on the programs that can be drawn out to bring forth the requisite changes. Proposed Objective of the Project The solution of the problem is only in the prevention and not in cure. The problems are naturally cured when the obesity goes off, if at all it goes off. Prevention requires a lot of proactive steps towards the achievement. Prevention is the best possible way, since prevention is better than cure. Prevention in case of non-communicable diseases means that they already exist but needs to be kept under control in the same individual. For communicable diseases it means prevention of the disease transferring from one person to another. In case of infectious diseases, the solution is generally to quarantine after proving first instance of medical attention. The curing process starts then. For non-communicable diseases the plan is entirely different. The framework differs from the nature of the disease. The NCD framework adopts the practices that relate to cure and non recurrence. The cure may be medicinal or non-medicinal. Obesity is best tackled by non-medicinal methods. There is some collateral damage that happens due to the obesity, which may require medicines to be administered. Obesity gives rise to problems like hypertension. This needs to be tackled by medication. But the obesity can be tackled by non-medicinal methods like lifestyle and dietary changes. The prevention framework actually revolves strongly around the creation of awareness and resulting in acceptance. Once these two are in place, natural cure is bound to happen. The challenge is to create the acceptance. (Ms Victoria Inglis, 2003) The implementation is bifurcated in to short term and long term. In the short term an obese child needs to do more of physical acidity and the energy levels of the child needs to be augmented to support the extra physical activity without the child falling tired. The immediate reduction of food habits in terms of quantity and the combination will serve immediate visible results. It is the long term strategies that the St George area of Sydney area people will be more interested in. The long term strategies would include lifestyle changes like waking up early, reducing late nights, teaching children healthy habits like morning walk, the community services keeping the parks clean and green to facilitate the lungs breathe clean air. The administration needs to be supportive to this by providing well kept parks for morning walks, encourage use of public transport, doing traffic management in the city to facilitate morning walkers, promote cycling to curb pollution and encouraging physical exercise, both helping keeping the population healthy. The Plan for Implementation The project can include a teaching plan that will create awareness amongst the children towards healthy lifestyle and food habits. A clear list of activities what to do and not to do needs to be supplied to the children for them to identify the good from the harmful. The awareness can be created by a program organised in the local town hall where all children attend. The children can be motivated to come through their respective schools. The attendance can be incentivised by giving away prizes and citations to the ones who attend the program. Parents and local TV and newspapers can also be used as a channel to draw the children. (Health, 2016), (Overweight Obesity Prevention, 2013) The dangers are not only restricted to this. The extra weight and fat the child carries along all the time has severe detrimental effects on the physical health of the child as well. It is pertinent to remember that a human body is designed to carry a certain amount of weight only. This amount increases with time as we grow up from a baby to an adult, so does our body strength. The obese children have the body strength that is same as any other child of similar age bracket. However, the limited strength has to carry an overburdened body all the time. The situation is complex. The body for a short time can live up to the challenge, but is soon tired and fatigues out. Hence these children tire out easily. The continuous carrying of extra weight means that body parts wear out more easily than the other children. The child is actually in a growing stage, where the body needs to get built up instead of breaking down. Both the process happens together. But in an obese child, the braking do wn is sometimes faster than the building up. Hence the physical growth becomes retarded, even though the child may be visibly over-nutritious. These include things like muscle growth, bone development, skeletal improvement, etc. Another aspect with obese children is that the internal organs need to deal with more stress as compare to normal children. The heart, lung, liver, intestine all need to gear up to support the body. Now since the entire physiological system fails to deliver together, many organs fail to deliver individually too. This leads to obese children developing heart diseases, diabetes, orthopaedic disorders and other problems. The aim is to tackle this challenge. (A Healthy and Active Australia, 2016) Proposed Evaluation Process The Evaluation Process of the project will include the measures that commonly are suggested are increased body activity to burn excess calories that accumulate naturally in the obese body. The body activity should be coordinated and orchestrated and not ad-hoc. There are medically proven styles of activities like typical exercises, aerobics, and yoga, that helps reduce and control obesity. The change in food intake pattern also is another proven method of controlling obesity. It is a misconception that fasting and / or starving oneself reduces calories. It does reduce calorie intake, but also reduces intake of other nutrients like protein and vitamins which are essential building blocks of the body. The solution thus is a orchestrated food habit the includes items low in calorie, like sugar and carbohydrate and items more in roughage and proteins and vitamins in measured quantities. A nutritionist is the perfect person to aid in this regards. The result will be the reduction in obesi ty amongst the children in the age group of 5 to 18 years. A typical preventive framework will include community sessions with the subjects (obese children) and their guardians. The sessions are more like training programs that educate the subjects to know the problem and the solutions. All solutions may not be applicable for all the subjects; hence specific customisation needs to be done. The framework also considers the environmental and operational aspects of the program. The program will include structures that support policies and various interventions, policies and initiatives that are widely accepted by the population, and interventions that can be adopted at the community level. The framework also needs to take care of the social-cultural aspect of the population in question. The framework needs to include educational programs and exemplary exhibitions of practically acceptable methods of obesity prevention and control. (Moodie, 2016) Literature Evidence The major literature consulted was the WHO report on the Population based approaches to Childhood Obesity Prevention (ISBN 9789241504782), 2012. The literature addresses Childhood Obesity and Strategies to tackle them in pages 13 14 and spirits the text mentioned in this article. The principles for developing an obesity prevention strategy is enumerated in pages 16 to 20 which has been the motivation for drawing our strategies as well. The strategy program requires proper support from various stakeholders as has been influenced by the WHO report pages 23 to 34. The role of the community has been motivated by concepts on pages 35 to 46. The report is largely guided by these principles. (Library, 2012) Shape up Australia was one such initiative mentioned in the literatures. The literature advocates that long term strategy of not luring children into eating junk food that is high in calorie intake, like carbonated drinks, fried packaged items, etc. The administration needs to undertake legislative changes to curb propaganda, either by means of advertisements or otherwise, towards promoting junk food and drinks. More so it should be illegal to target luring the children towards the consumption of the junk food. This will prevent the craving amongst children towards junk food. Parent and guardian education in this regard is of paramount importance. The good habits start at home. Even school environment should promote healthy living and food habits. It can be a mandatory part of curriculum to teach students the concept of healthy lifestyle encompassing both food and structural changes. Conclusion There are various programs that have been designed over time to tackle obesity. The chief amongst them is the awareness program. The programs have been endorsed by the WHO and supported by the government. The need of the hour is process of exercise and lifestyle change along with dietary changes to be planned out at the apex level. The operational plan can be drawn out by the implementing agencies. The process is leadership activities that need to be seriously convinced about the success of such programs and give them a head start. Through this article it is seen that childhood obesity is a menace that is plaguing the developed nations. Since children are the future generation, having more obese children in the age group of 5 16 will mean less healthy generation. This generation will grow up into adults with the same disorders and give rise to an unhealthy population as a whole affecting the next generation. This is not a problem of an individual child, but is of the community as a whole. Moreover, the problem affects an entire generation whereby the medical future looks scary. 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To promote awareness of the risk factors that contribute to childhood obesity and assess the ability of parents to develop shared strategies to reduce such risks. Hospital, OzChild : Children Australia Centre for Community Child Health Royal Childrens. NSW Ministry of Health, N. D. (2016). Overweight and Obesity. Retrieved 10 12, 1026, from Healthy Kids: https://www.healthykids.nsw.gov.au/stats-research/overweight-and-obesity.aspx Overweight Obesity Prevention. (2013). Retrieved 10 12, 2016, from Promoting a Healthy Australia: https://health.gov.au/internet/anpha/publishing.nsf/Content/obesity-home