Childhood Obesity: A Comprehensive Analysis and Policy Proposals, Lecture notes of Financial Accounting

Download Childhood Obesity: A Comprehensive Analysis and Policy Proposals and more Lecture notes Financial Accounting in PDF only on Docsity! Running head:Childhood Obesity-A Call for Action Childhood Obesity-A Call for Action Chamberlain College of Nursing NR506: Health Care Policy CHILDHOOD OBESITY 2 Childhood Obesity-A Call for Action Childhood obesity is a national problem that needs to have further healthcare policies created to combat it. Healthcare policies are put into place to achieve healthcare goal for the betterment of the individual society. Many suggestions have been made to try to combat this problem, each with some level of success but obesity continues to be a problem not only in children but also in adults. Nurses can play an integral role in the implementation and consultation of these healthcare policies. They have a unique perspective as being natural advocates for their patients, and developing policies to help their patients in their quest for better health. Overview of Healthcare Policy Healthcare policy in its most general terms can be defined as the set of decisions, plans or actions that are put together in an attempt to achieve certain healthcare goals in a society (Mason, Gardner, Outlaw & O’Grady, 2016). Healthcare policy is extremely important to the nursing profession and often nurses play an important piece in formulating these policies. In general, nurses play an important role in influencing the nature and functionality of the health care system. They often advocate for these policies to better care for their patients. Nurses advocate for their patients on a regular basis, whether it when they are sick and needing care or for pushing lawmakers to create policies that will benefit the entire country (Mason et al, 2016).While traditionally nurses advocate for one patient at a time, when they advocate for society at the national level by working in policy making, they can make a larger impact for everyone at once. Nurse advocates can have an immense impact on healthcare policy because they are able to visualize what would be best for all the stakeholders, lobbyists and people who will be affected by the policy. CHILDHOOD OBESITY 5 dietary choices in early childhood can affect their health for a lifetime (Kim, Kim, Park, Wang & Lim, 2019). In elementary schools, children are generally introduced to letters and reading then follows. Most schools utilize a letter or 2 for the week as their focus and plan activities and stories around those letters for the entire week. What if this same concept was utilized for healthy eating? The teacher could choose a fruit and vegetable for each week, focusing their classwork and homework around these healthy foods. Starting each Monday, the focus would change weekly and activities could revolve around them. This could be further enhanced by including the school meals around these fruits and vegetables as well. While it wouldn’t make sense to serve the same vegetable everyday for lunch, it could be prepared 3 different ways on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and the fruit served in 2 different ways on Tuesday and Thursday. If the teacher brought in the vegetable and fruit for the week on Monday, the children could look, feel, smell and taste them to increase the likelihood that they would want to try this new food (Kim et al, 2019). The teacher could also send recipes home with the children so that parents would have an opportunity to encourage their children to try the new food and demonstrate by example the parent’s acceptance of the new food as well. It would be beneficial to include the entire school in the recipes being provided to encourage all children, and their parents, to try some new healthy foods. Most school-aged children do not consume the recommended daily amounts of fruits and vegetables (2 servings of fruits and 3 servings of vegetables) and often are unwilling to try new foods especially when the adults around them do not demonstrate a willingness to eat them too (Hong et al, 2018). Repeated exposure to new foods along with sensory exposure to the new food repeatedly has been shown to be the most effective way to increase a child’s willingness to try a new food (Hong et al, 2018). When children are exposed visually to the food in the classroom, hear stories about the food, smell and taste the food during lunch at school and can discuss them CHILDHOOD OBESITY 6 with their parents when they get home, especially if the parent is willing to try some of the recipes that are sent home, it is more likely that they will try the food at least once by the end of the week. This process should be repeated weekly with a new fruit and vegetable showcased for the week. It is important to continue to serve these new foods in different ways not only during school lunches but also at home with parent involvement. There are many expected outcomes from this simple change in education to the kindergarten class, one of which would be an increase in the number of servings of fruits and vegetables consumed by these children. Consumption of more fruits and vegetables has been shown to help with weight loss and decrease the likelihood of becoming overweight (Hong et al, 2018). By increasing children’s exposure to fruits and vegetables and creating good habits of eating these healthy foods will lead to lifelong habits of making healthy food choices. Often children are either exposed to a few vegetables served the same way every time and they decide that they do not like the vegetable and consequently will not eat it or they are never exposed to them and so are unwilling to try something new. One of the biggest challenges to increasing the amount of healthy foods, especially fresh ones, is that they tend to cost more than their unhealthy counterparts. By allowing schools to substitute canned, dried, frozen or pureed fruits and vegetables often increases the amount of sugar and sodium which negates the “healthiness” of these foods but helps decrease the cost (Schultz & Thorlton, 2019). In order to offset the cost of these foods, it would be helpful to have community access to fresh fruits and vegetables. This not only benefits the schools through decrease costs of transporting these fruits and vegetables but also increases the economy of the community through local purchasing of these fruits and vegetables. It would be great if some of the farms and markets in the community could include a coupon for a percentage off of the fruit and vegetable of the week to be included with the recipes sent home to the family (Schultz & Thorlton, 2019). CHILDHOOD OBESITY 7 Unfortunately, not all communities will have access to fresh fruits and vegetables in their community and transporting these fresh fruits and vegetables to the school will have increased costs to the school district. One possible way to combat these increased costs, would be having the schools grow their own fruits and vegetables to be used in the school lunches. This process would not only increase exposure to these fresh fruits and vegetables to older elementary and secondary school-aged children but could be utilized for additional curriculum as well (Roche et al, 2017). A survey of the children before starting implementation could simple state how many vegetables and fruits did you eat yesterday, how many for the last week and on average how many per day in the last month. It would be useful to send the survey home with the discount coupons and recipes for the younger children and as a homework assignment for the older children, to encourage compliance with returning the surveys. It would be useful to send home this same survey at monthly intervals for the first 3 years after implementation to not only see the immediate but also long-term effects of this change (Roche et al, 2017). It will also be useful to obtain each students height, weight and BMI (body mass index) and follow these on a yearly basis to see if the intervention is working. In order for this intervention to be successful it would need to result in a decrease in BMIs for the overall group and an increase in consumption of fruits and vegetables. There would need to be some level of community buy-in especially with the coupons for the fresh vegetables and fruits as well as providing them for the school to use in lunches. It is also important that parents, and their children, are willing to try some of these “new” fruits and vegetables after being exposed to them. Identification of Elected Official This policy change would be most effective with support from the school board since they approve all curriculum and budgets for the upcoming school year. Perry Hartswick is the CHILDHOOD OBESITY 10 References Ahmad, S. R., Schubert, L. & Bush, R. (2018). Government and school community member perception on childhood obesity prevention in the primary school settings of Bruei Darussalam. Journal of Health Sciences, 8(3), 181-188. Doi: 10.17532/jhsci.2018.191 Dicken, J. E. (2019). Childhood obesity research demonstration: Efforts to identify effective strategies for low-income children. GAO Reports 20-30, pi-42. Kim, J., Kim, G., Park, J., Wang, Y. & Lim, H. (2019). Effectiveness of teacher-led nutritional lessons in altering dietary habits and nutritional status in preschool children: Adoption of a NASA mission x-based program. Nutrients 11(7), 1590. Doi: 10.3390/nu11071590 Gunasekaran, D. D., Talib, R. A., Safii, N. S., Sharif, R., Ahman, M. & Koon, P. B. (2018). Juara Sihat™: Study Design of a School-based Childhood Obesity Nutrition Education Programme in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Malaysian Journal of Health Sciences, 16. 119- 127. Doi: 10.17576/jskm-2018-17 Hawkes, A. P., Weinberg, S. L., Janusz, R., Demont-Heinrich, C. & Vogt, R. L. (2016). An innovative method of measuring changes in access to healthful foods in school lunch programs: Findings from a pilot evaluation. Public Library of Science, 11(1), e0146875. Doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0146875 Hong, J., Bales, D. W. & Wallinga, C. R. (2018). Using family backpacks to involve families in teaching young children about healthy eating. Early Childhood Education Journal 46(2), 209-221. Doi: 10.1007/s10643-017-0848-8 Mason, D. J., Gardner, D. B., Outlaw, F. H., & O'Grady, E. T. (2016). Policy & politics in nursing and healthcare (7th ed.). Retrieved from http://online.vitalsource.com Roche, E., Kolodinsky, J. M., Johnson, R. K. Pharis, M. & Banning, J. (2017). School gardens may combat childhood obesity. Choices: The Magazine of Food, Farm & Resource Issues, 32(1), 1-6. CHILDHOOD OBESITY 11 Schultz, C. & Thorlton, J. (2019). Access to fresh fruits and vegetables in school lunches: A policy analysis. The Journal of School Nursing, 35(4), 248-255. Doi: 10.1177/1059840518762517.