Childhood Obesity: The Effects of Ecological Models on Obesity (Essay Sample)

Childhood Obesity
Student’s Name
Institution
Childhood obesity is adversely affecting the lives of millions of Americans across the United States. Obese children have excess body fat that presents major health risks for them in their everyday lives. As a fact, one in three children in the US suffers from obesity, and the condition doesn't look to be ending anytime soon. Much of the increased diagnosis has been linked to the lifestyle transitions, genetic makeup and the feeding habits of the patients. This is a crisp depiction of the biological and the environmental based causes of the condition. This paper focuses on exploring the state by applying the ecological model in examining the potential causes of the disease, prospective care programs instituted to control the condition and provide concise proposals on how these care programs can best impact the society in addressing diabetes conditions. The examination of the condition shall be based on the Anne Arundel County.
Growing up to become obese Adults, the number of obese children has been on the rise in the years with the children with obese parents being at a great risk of being diagnosed with obesity between the ages of 9-14 years. From the obesity reports of Anne Arundel County, studies were carried in the public high schools, and it was established that 42% of the surveyed students were physically active for 60 or more minutes on five or more days per week. On the other hand, it was also established that 23.3% of the surveyed students reported taking the recommended nutritional diet featuring five servings of vegetables and fruits a day. The majority of the students were found to watch TV at least three or more hours a day and to engage in the play of video games and use of computers, a being that makes them highly inactive and more exposed to risks of being diagnosed with Childhood obesity.
On assessing the prevalence of the condition the diagnosis, patterns are succinct hence on employing the socio-ecological approach, the physical and social environments that strongly influence the conditions patterns shall be established. This is imperative for the determination of the effective prevention and care programs to manage the disease prevalence. However, through Arundel Health Department coalition program, a great fight has been instituted against obesity with a major focus being placed on helping adults live healthy lives to reduce the proportion of children with obese. Making use of extensive health tools, the program has organized healthy events and educative meetings to instill embracement of healthy lifestyles among the Arundel county members.
Literature Review
Numerous studies have shown the link and correlation between obesity and the built environment that is a portrayal of how the environmental transitions have resulted in the increased population of people being diagnosed with Obesity. Cohen (2008) asserts that over the last 30 years, the global environment has greatly transitioned into a sophisticated being characterized changes in the physical activity environments, food, and overall health practices. On assessing the Food environment, he examines shifts to which he opines that food accessibility transitions, food salience and the decresed changes in the prices of the food stand out as the core changes that reflects the increased childhood obesity in the society. with the increased advertising and promotions of junk food has promoted obesity aligned to the lifestyle changes whereby people have abandoned their cooking cultures to embrace the fast food offers, foods that contain high fat and sugar content dangerous to an individual's body system CITATION Lud12 \l 1033 (Ludwig, Peterson, & Gotmarker, 2012).
The physical activities have been known to being the best remedy to burning the fat content and consumption of the high sugar content in the blood for energy. Ebbeling, Pawlak, & Ludwig (2012) insists that the overweight individuals are exposed to higher risk of being diagnosed with Obesity compared to the lightweight individuals. Their research insists that the number of individuals diagnosed with obesity had increased by 75% between 2000 and 2005 majorly attributed to the technological and lifestyle changes CITATION Ebb12 \l 1033 (Ebbeling, Pawlak, & Ludwig, 2012). With the majority of the American citizens providing their children with much technological based entertainment such as televisions and computers, children have preferred socializing and interacting with their peers through these technology-based products, a being that has nestled their physical exercises. This is a built environment wholly contributing the rate of diabetes in the society.
Behavioural and non-behavioural factors
Exploration of the literature review brings out the classification of the factors contributing to Obesity. The behavioral factors are the causative factors that result in obesity arising from the acts and behavior of an individual. An individual’s behavior includes the eating habit of an individual with regards to types of foods eaten and the frequency of feeding an individual adopts. Through poor feeding habits, an individual ends up consuming much junk food that increases an individual’s exposure to obesity CITATION Ale13 \l 1033 (Kazaks & Stern, 2013). Also, with an individual adopting a lifestyle lacking physical exercises, this is a behavioral factor that shall increase the chances of developing obesity. This includes playing video games and watching TV that prevents them from burning fats hence fat shall coagulate in their body tissues resulting in obesity CITATION Com13 \l 1033 (Committee on Evaluating Progress of Obesity Prevention Effort, 2013).
Being a metabolic dysfunction in an individual’s body, the pathophysiology of diabetes well explains the non-behavioral factors causing obesity. The dysfunction is closely linked to the absorption of lipids and glucose in the body with an imbalance being established from the food taken in and the energy usage over time CITATION Ale13 \l 1033 (Kazaks & Stern, 2013). With the production of less insulin in the body, the breakage of lipids for absorption is compromised causing accumulation of fats body fats to an extent that the whole body functioning is impaired i.e. obesity. The physicians have best-explained obesity using the BMI with its being more than 30 classified as an obesity case. In this case, an individual shall be affirmed to having highly increased adipocytes with an individual taking in much food which is not all absorbed by the body. Also, with energy storage being a key determinant of an individual's survival against obesity, the genetic makeup has been tied to the increased obesity rates. Cohen (2008) thereby affirms that the genetic makeup might have evolved to maximize energy storage a being that has been thought of being a transmitter of obesity genetically from parents to the children.
Arundel Health Department Coalition program
Arundel's Health department coalition program has wholly engaged in the stewardship towards increasing the proportion of the children in the society living healthy lives free from obesity and also offering crisp care information on how the Arundel Society can live quality lives. Through the social media and seminars, the program has established a succinct framework to educate the society on better practices to help their children live healthy lives CITATION Dep16 \l 1033 (Health, 2016). This has allowed the program provide sufficient care resources such as the screening and test tools, care institutions and provision of specialists to help control the condition rates.
In addition to the provision of care information the programs has strived to provide sufficient screening tools, testing and care resources to help the society prevent obesity development and also adopt nutritional practices that can best allow the children grow normally against obesity CITATION Dep16 \l 1033 (Health, 2016). Also, the program has collaborated with different survey programs to collect sufficient data to help control the condition cases in the county. This has been a collaboration with the national government which has enabled the program to have access to funds to run the practices against childhood obesity.
Alternative and additional steps to improve the program impact
The program should opt for an awareness campaign plan through which the prog...