Introduction to NSW Healthy Eating and Active Living Strategy
Discuss about the Interpretation and Dialogue in Policy Analysis.
The policy named NSW Healthy Eating and Active Living Strategy is one of the best policies that had been proposed by the NSW government of health that had been successful in depicting the scenario of the present day quality of lives of the people of the nation. It has been seen that most of the people of the nation is living a poor quality life due to lack of health literacy on the importance of healthy eating as well as active living in the nation. Overweight and obesity has resulted in suffering from different types of burden of diseases that had resulted in affecting them physically, mentally and financially (Dunn, 2015). Therefore, there remained an importance to develop a policy which would help in helping the nation to overcome such burden of health issues and ensure better quality living. Therefore, this policy had been developed to address the said issues. This policy has been developed following the five important priority actions of the Ottawa charter and therefore all-important aspects required to mitigate the issues had been successfully covered. Moreover, the goals and objectives that were set along with timeframes and resources allocated had ensured addressing all the important domains successfully (Waagrner, 2014). However, certain aspects need to be discussed in depth in the policy analysis assignments to develop a better understanding on the applicability of the policy.
In the present generation, the nation of Australia is suffering from issues of unhealthy living of the citizens that had made the nation a prey for various chronic disorders. One of the most important and dangerous outcome of improper lifestyle management is overweight and obesity. A large number of people have been seen to be affected by obesity and hence had become vulnerable to many chronic disorders that affects the quality of their living resulting or may also threaten their lives (Alden & Aran, 2016). The page of the policy document, which comes under the section called “united for change”, had established a statistical background that is quite broad and at the same time easier to understand for the common people about the prevalence of the condition of obesity in the nation. I have given a simple explanation about how taking of more energies than needed may result in accumulation of calories resulting in severe weight gain and unhealthy life. Researchers over the years had conducted important studies and observations that had made them find out important disorders that result from such unhealthy living conditions and obesity (Freidman, 2017). The different disorders may range from type 2 diabetes to that of hypertension as well as to cardiovascular diseases. This may include severe threatening conditions like heart attack as well as stroke. Other than this, high cholesterol, gall bladder disorders as well as liver disorders may also result. Cancer as well as sleep apnoea may also accommodate with situations like obesity that may also include osteoarthritis and several other mood disorders including the enhanced risks of anxiety as well as depression. Therefore, obesity and overweight situation may affect the quality of life of persons in many ways making them prone to take up issues that affect their living. Therefore, the policy has rightly taken up an issue to address that requires not only attention but also an immediate urgency to be addressed. While addressing the issues, the policy had become successful in identifying the two domains through which interventions would be implemented. (apthorpe, 2014) The first one is the social domain where the policy makers had correctly identified the various social modifications required for the lessening of the prevalence of obesity in the individuals. The four strategic directions that need were developed were indeed evidence based and were highly efficiency in reducing the prevalence of the heath issues. Not only they have provided importance to the development of objectives that believe in the efficient of modifications of the society and developing environment that supports mitigation of the health issues but have also provided importance to the economic domain. Such policies that work on a large area of the nation needs to have huge allocation of the funds so that they can easily accommodate and manage resources required for implementing the initiatives for changing the scenario of high prevalence of obesity. The policy is also seen to allocate resources that are mentioned in the highlight section that shows the fund that government is ready to spend on the initiatives. This helps to understand that the policy had been developed with a detailed plan and rationale and had been rightly addressing the issues that are affecting the lives of the citizen in the nation making them more vulnerable to living (Freidman et al., 2017).
Prevalence of Overweight and Obesity in Australia
Researchers are of the opinion that it is extremely important for every healthcare policy to have a set of goals that are extremely important to have a clear mission and vision of the policy (Dror et al. 2017). It is stated in the studies that when goals and objectives are not clear, it results in confusion about the motive and the actions that need to be taken and even results in financial issues, excessive outflow of money without specific outcomes, loss of motivation among the employees, duplication of actions, unsuccessful outcomes and many others. Therefore, fixation of goals and objectives are extremely necessary to develop transparency and clear ideas among the healthcare departments, governmental departments and others who would be working together to implement the activities (Cob, Jackson & Dunlap, 2016). A very interesting picture of setting of goals can be identified in the goal-target section on page number 4 that exhibits the depth of the thinking and analysis that had gone into it to develop such specific goals. The goals that had been developed are seen to be prepared with SMART GOALS. The goals that had been developed are highly specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timeframe. Researchers are of the opinion that SMART goals help concerned individuals to know exactly what needs to be done and by how much time would be required to achieve the goals. Every goal had set a period and is quite clear about its achievement that needs to make and this ensures that the policy has high chance of success. The goals that are set are very specific and are not found to be overlapping with each other or confusing. Each of the actions that need to be taken will have direct impact on the health as all the goals are directly associated with calorie burning and health lifestyle intervention and therefore they will be fruitful for reducing the obesity burden of the nation. In the next immediate page, the policy had stated its objectives. The interventions that they have taken are evidence based (Stam, 2015). All the objectives that they have set are evidence based and are helpful in reducing the chances of occurrence of obesity. Reduction in the energy-dense nutrient-poor food and drinks, increased consumption of fruits and vegetables, reduction in sedentary lifestyles, increase in moderate and vigorous activities, increasing community awareness and others – all are evidence based information. They are already proved their efficacy in reduction of weight and development of health in the different randomized control trials, observatory studies, case studies and other researches. Therefore, setting of such objectives by the policy makers and healthcare professionals ensure that the objective are attainable and ensures success.
Domains and Strategic Directions in the Policy
One important aspect of this policy is that it had clearly helped in setting priorities as four important strategic directions that will guide the concerned authorities to take the necessary steps. However, before proceeding with the discussion of the priorities, it should be stated that the policy had taken one important aspect and had discussed it in details. The policy had been developed for the target audience. The first of the categories are the women of the reproductive health who is one of the most important persons of the nation. This is mainly because they are giving birth to the new generations who would be the leaders of the future. Therefore, it becomes extremely important for such adults to be extra careful with their health and lifestyle so that they can not only give birth to healthy babies but also go through non-risky and healthy periods of pregnancy (Evans et al., 2017). The policy had also discussed the importance of this policy in addressing similar issues in the early year children as well as in children and young people. The impacts on the adults were also discussed in details along with special priorities given to the health issue impacts on the aboriginal communities, people living in the remote areas, socio-economically disadvantaged areas as well as culturally linguistic diverse communities. Such categories of people are usually found to have poor access to healthcare. They are neither able to get services such as screening, successful diagnosis and suggestions of the healthcare professionals or they are educated enough to understand about the impacts that their unhealthy lifestyle have on their health. Therefore, these categories are indeed the prior targets that the policy should be meeting and hence in this respect the policy can be stated to have identified the most vulnerable groups of the people of the nation successfully (Daly & Westwood, 2017).
Four important strategic direction were developed in ways by which four main aspect were prioritized in the policy planning. One of the most important aspects set in the directive one is building “Environments to support healthy eating and active living”. This priority in turn has a a number of initiatives that need to be taken and are quite specific which states that the policy makers have gone to the depth and had developed the idea about how to develop the environment to make it more suitable to meet the needs of the people (Enriques, 2015). This is one of the most important priorities as it had been scientifically accepted all over the world as this is one of the aspect of the Ottawa charter. Out of the five important priority sections of the Ottawa charter which the international framework for the health promotion programs is the development of environment that support safe and healthy living. It is seen that development of environment with the help of different governmental and nongovernmental collaborations along with the other health professionals. Two important features were put importance in the development of the healthy environment that were having availability of healthier choices and developing initiatives for supporting active living. Another very interesting aspect was the second direction called the state based interventions that were mainly aimed at programs supporting healthy eating and healthy living. These match with the another priority action called the community based support programs which are indeed important to bring changes in a community based manners. Specific resources for each of the actions were not disclosed in details in each of the initiatives that had been developed but detailed planning had been done about the actions that need to be taken. Some of the priorities that had been set in this section is the proper healthy eating as well as physical activity program for each of the vulnerable categories of people (Gaviridis & Metaxas, 2017). Community is the place that helps in developing not only the culture and behavior of the human beings but also shape the ways by which an individual develops an idea about his or her healthy living. They have introduced initiatives like early childhood services, schools as well as community sports, workplaces as well as the community as a whole like helping the older adults to be specific. Researchers are of the ideas that community programs are helpful rather than wide nationwide programs as it helps in including each individual at a much personalized level and helps in addressing the issues of each of the vulnerable patient much more efficiently. One striking feature is that the policy makers were very particular about the community-based programs and had developed them in ways by which the target population and their cohorts are rightly addressed. Moreover, working on a smaller scale in community based systems help to provide efficient service through better evaluation and monitoring and hence, it is one of the successful initiatives that had been taken for betterment. The third directional strategy can be well accommodate in the priority action of the Ottawa charter which dictate healthcare professionals to provide importance to reorienting healthcare services in ways by which best treatment services and diagnostic methods can be adopted that would ensure healthy living (Hennesy & strebulaev, 2015). Here, just like the previous direction where resources for arranging on community based services would be arranged, in this direction different resources would be used for the organization of different services by the government for mainly helping the different healthcare centers as well as similar other organizations to provide services helping individuals to overcome the problems. Moreover, besides the clear description of the resources that would help in achieving of the initiatives, timeframe were also discussed in the smart goals (Healey et al., 2017). These would not only help in aligning with the goals and setting deadlines for achieving of the targets but would also help the evaluation committee to measure its success level and accordingly plan for the further steps.
Setting Clear Goals and Objectives
The policy is well supported with a wide number of evidences. Staring from the prevalence of the disorders and the statistical studies to different of the initiatives of the development of better nation free from any obesity and unhealthy issues, all have been well supported with rationales. If we provide a look on the “current status” page, it can be well identified that all the discussion of the policy as well as the issues associated with the disorder had been clearly explained with the help of the evidences that had been put forward in different studies (Crenshaw, 2018). It is astonishing to found that the policy makers had been successful in developing direction strategies that had successfully covered all-important domains for ensuring reduction of weight and development of physical activities of the vulnerable patients. Moreover, another interesting feature was that it was found that specific programs were also developed with specific cultures and cohorts in target like that of the Aboriginal people as well as culturally and linguistically different people. Moreover, pregnant women as well as people with high risk of diabetes were also found to have included within specific programs that addressed their needs. Moreover, importances were provided to education and self-learning of the importance of reduction in weight. This leaves very little scope of suggesting an alternative approach or alternative strategies required for development of any new interventions for achieving the goals (Ball, 2015). This is because all possible ways for achieving the goals had been successfully captured by the professionals and the government authorities of the New South Wales (Boardman et al., 2017). However, only one aspect that could have been provided more importance to is to clarify the functions of each of the stakeholders successfully. In the different planning throughout the policy that had been developed for the implementation of the different strategies, the stakeholders who will be in key position and will be handling the different initiatives were not mentioned properly. Throughout the policy, the governmental departments were said to be involved but they have not clarified the actions of each of the stakeholders that might in the end create a sense of confusion among the readers (Huang et al., 2017). This would have resulted in more transparency in the policy and would have ensured better output.
Conclusion:
From the above analysis, it was found that most of the aspects of the policy were worth appreciating. They had correctly addressed an issue which had already become a root of poor quality lives of individuals of the nation mentally and physically but had also been a source of financial issue on individuals who are burdened with the chronic disorders. Obesity and overweight expose individuals to a large number of different types of health concerns and are affecting individuals starting from early years to that of even old age adults. Therefore addressing such issue was a necessity for the policy makers. The different initiatives that had been taken had successfully covered the five important priority actions that had been prioritized by the Ottawa charter and each of the priority areas had successfully been handles by development of SMART goals and taking specific actions for meeting each of the direction strategies developed by the individuals. However, although most of the points are successfully planned and set for interventions, one important thing was not paid importance that affects the clarity of the policy paper. The policy makers have not provided the duty of the each of the stakeholders who would be involved in the programs or who would be working collaboratively to meet the goals. Only some of the departments of the New South Wales had been mentioned but they have not provided any importance to the actions and responsibilities of the stakeholders. Therefore, there remains a lack of transparency in this aspect. This might make it confusing for the stakeholders involved to understand their own roles in meeting the objectives. Therefore, the recommendation would be that in the next section after the discussion about the direction-strategies and what the government needs to so in meeting the strategies, detailed responsibilities of the stakeholders should be included. This would help the individuals to understand their own roles while acting collaboratively within the governmental departments and helping them to take steps that would help individuals in meeting their goals. Under each of the actions, the stakeholders’ duty is to be mentioned and this would help in shedding more light on the policies.
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