Obesity in Children's In Michigan: Developing an Advocacy Campaign

Introduction

According to CDCP (centers for disease control and prevention) children, obesity has increased over the past 30 years. The percentage of children from the age of six years to eleven years in the United States has increased by 11%. Among children aged between 12 and 19 years, obesity increased with about 16% in the last 30 years (Johnson & Johnson, 2015). Besides some progress in controlling childhood obesity more than 30% of children in America are either obese or overweight. In Michigan children aged between 0-17 years is obese accounting for 32.6% of children in this region. This is compared to a nationwide standard of 31.3% (Song, Song, Nieves, Gonzalez & Crockett, 2016). It is evident that obese or overweight children are probable to achieving low academic performance particularly scores poorly in mathematics as compared to non-overweight children (Brownell & Walsh, 2017). To remedy childhood obesity in Michigan, BCBSM (blue cross blue shield of Michigan) introduced BHC (building healthy communities) programme to alleviate childhood obesity in schools. The program was objected to enable children to acquire healthy habits at a tender age. According to experts childhood obesity is likely to attribute to shorter life expectancy in the current generation. They have argued that obesity paves the way for various chronic diseases and it is in the front line of premature deaths. It is evident that poor eating habits accompanied by limited physical activities contribute highly to obesity menace.

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An Advocacy Campaign of Nutrition Standards in School

This advocacy campaign was objected to improving the nutritional qualities of both beverages and foods in Michigan schools. The programme dealt with foods and beverages provided or sold on school campus such vending machines, school stores, school parties, concession stands as well as during post-school events. The advocacy aimed at producing adults with greater productivity less absenteeism and lowers health care cost. The Michigan nutrition standards emphasize on vegetables and colorful fruits, beans, nuts, whole grain as well as lean proteins. The advocacy maintained that over 50% of the daily energy induction is often consumed at school time (Song, Song, Nieves, Gonzalez & Crockett, 2016). It stated that around 196 million lunches and breakfast were provided to Michigan students in the past few years. The campaign maintained that children obesity occurs innocently and gradually as a result of massive consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, chips, fatty meats, French fries, cookies, cakes, pizza, doughnuts, and whole milk and flew meat. On the other hand school, children are known to consume limited nutritional food such as low-fat dairy, vegetables, whole grains, and fruits. The advocacy maintains that children obesity raises medical expenses and other direct cost linked with obesity a situation that burdens the healthcare systems. This situation led to the formulation of nutrition standard advocacy campaign in Michigan to reverse children obesity contagion. The campaign was to ensure that future generation lowers the medical bills in all community health care systems.

Childhood Obesity Prevention Campaign in Michigan

This was an advocacy campaign conducted in various Michigan schools to distinguish children obesity prevention through work groups that consisted of private and public partners, government officials, school representatives and other representatives, particularly from low-income regions. The programme aimed at completing an environmental scan of the available resources, policies, and programs in Michigan for children with obesity (Song, Song, Nieves, Gonzalez & Crockett, 2016). On the other hand, the advocacy campaign provided mini-grants to various district schools so that they could apply local policies and utilize these policies through social marketing systems. Additionally, the summit was objected to completing a five-year national wide activity of policy reforms for communities and schools which were designed to enhance accessibility to healthy foods and chances for more physical activities. The results from the summit were to be provided to the government and the Michigan legislators to aid in the formulation of children obesity reforms plan.

The Effectiveness of the Two Campaigns

The two campaigns targeted school children where a bigger percentage of childhood obesity is found. The advocate campaign focused on the main healthy behaviors and prevention programmes that maintained a healthy eating habit as well as advocating for physical exercises. The campaigns provided accessibility to health education, health food, physical exercise programme and physical education courses that assisted children to maintain healthiness and become active individuals in life. Both advocacy campaigns were objected to ensuring that children adopted healthy habits at their tender age while rising the probability that those children would carry those characters into maturity thus lowering risks of developing multiple hazards issues. The two campaigns are effective in that they explore a wide network of schools with programmes of physical activities and healthy eating habits which are key prevention measures for obesity menace (Bray & Bouchard, 2014). The campaigns involved the collaboration with main health and wellness officials such as MDHHS (Michigan department of health and human services), Michigan team nutrition, Michigan fitness foundation and Michigan department of education. The advocate campaigns have drawn attention from various institutions that have pooled resources, funds and knowledge to intensify the programmes.

Recommended Policy Resolution

Through the existing facts that childhood obesity has been found to be as a result of poor physical exercises and unhealthy eating habits, the recommended policy suggest that changes in eating behaviors and lifestyles may play a crucial role in controlling obesity prevalence globally. The existing studies associate obese to overweight and from the result of raised sugars, fats and calories intake. In the meantime, continuous decrease in physical activities contributes to the rise of obesity among children. Following this situation, the recommended policy advises children, guardians, and parents to manage diet content of children's beverages and foods as well as physical exercises. As a resolution to this epidemic, this policy advises parents to design the standardized diet for youth and guide them in engaging in physical exercises.

Particular Objectives

Obesity in children influences them negatively. For example, it influences the social, physical and emotional wellness in youth unfavorably. In the meantime, the health and self-esteem of overweight children are at hand. Obesity has been linked with devastating academic performances as well as poor quality of life. The recommended policy is objected to mitigating the effects associated with obesity. The fast objective is to decline the degree of overweight globally. Second, the policy will create a profound healthy children nation in emotional, social and physical as well as esteem. Finally, this policy is objected to creating a high performing academic children nation by alleviating negative effects that hinder academic performance in various children.

Substantiation of the Recommended Advocacy

According to Brownell and Walsh, (2017) protecting youths from obesity helps decrease their probability of obtaining the low-quality life that is massively experienced by many children. In the meantime, Bray & Bouchard, (2014) suggests that functionalizing a policy or a structure to help remedy obesity will protect the youth from co-morbid circumstances categorized as metabolic, cardiovascular, neurological, orthopedic, pulmonary, hepatic and renal illnesses connected with childhood obesity. Finally, through healthy eating and healthy lifestyle children can register a significant percentage in the deduction of obesity cases and related issues in public health care systems.

References

Bray, G. A., & Bouchard, C. (Eds.). (2014). Handbook of Obesity-Volume 2: Clinical Applications (Vol. 2). CRC Press.

Brownell, K. D., & Walsh, B. T. (Eds.). (2017). Eating disorders and obesity: A comprehensive handbook. Guilford Publications.

Johnson Iii, J. A., & Johnson, A. M. (2015). Urban-rural differences in childhood and adolescent obesity in the United States: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Childhood Obesity, 11(3), 233-241.

Song, W. O., Song, S., Nieves, V., Gonzalez, A., & Crockett, E. T. (2016). Nutritional health attitudes and behaviors and their associations with the risk of overweight/obesity among child care providers in Michigan Migrant and Seasonal Head Start centers. BMC public health, 16(1), 648.