Health Challenges Posed by Obesity
Health promotion is the process of enabling people to increase control over and improve their health (WHO, 1986). Choose one illness/condition and discuss the role of the nurse/midwife in the five major strategies for health promotion identified in the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (WHO, Health and Welfare Canada & CPHA, 1986).
Primary healthcare nursing is essential in the present day generation as this is the first stop of individuals who want to develop their health condition through guidance, identify any disorders if present, assign medications as well as educate them about health and lifestyle (Flynn, 2015). They consider health as a state of complete, physical, mental as well as social well being and not merely the presence or absence of any diseases of infirmity. Professionals of primary nursing are mainly seen to reaffirm health as a human right and thereby see the economic as well as social development as a prerequisite to the attainment of health for all. They are trained in ways by which they consider promotion as well as protections of the health as well as reduction and social disparities in health as the main drivers that ensure economic and social development and have positive impacts on world peace (Thompson et al., 2018). Primary healthcare nurses have the duty to acknowledge the dignity, values, beliefs as well as rights of individuals and groups. They help in development of behaviours that ensure health living for all individuals in the community 9Gagne & Lapalme, 2017). This assignment will mainly show how primary healthcare nurses can provide high quality care by marinating the five key action areas of Ottawa charter and thereby help in development of health condition of communities.
Obesity is one of the most severe chronic disorders that is affecting huge number of population in the nation of Australia. This disorder associated with gaining of excessive weight has become one of the major risk factors for cardiovascular disorder, type 2 diabetes, musco-skeletal conditions as well as cancers 9chen et al., 2016). When the level of excessive weight is seen to increase, the capability of body of the individuals to manage chronic conditions decreases rapidly. it also associated with different types of mental health disorders like depression, anxiety and many others. Social isolation, workplace bullying and humiliation are also some associated outcomes of the disorder that destroy high quality life of the individuals. Statistically, it is seen that about almost 2 in 3 adults are overweight or obsess in the year 2014 and 2015 and this disorder contributed to about 7% of the burden of the diseases in the nation. About 28% of the Australian adults were found to be obese in the year 2014 to 2015 that increased from the number of 19% in the year 1995. Even children were seen to be obese accounting for about 1 in 4 Australian children aged 2 to 17 in the year 2014 to 2015 (Fry & Zask, 2016). Therefore, it has indeed become a severe disorder, which primary healthcare professionals need to focus on urgently. This should be done so that the nation becomes a place for fit and healthy individuals who can dedicate their best not only to the nation but also to their own lives and their families. Intake of huge amount of food with high calories, poor diet with huge amount of processed foods, drinking too much alcohol, sugary drinks, comfort eating are some of the causes that result in obesity (Maximova et al., 2016). Lack of physical activity, remaining in sitting relaxing position for a large amount of time and many others are also contributors. Genetics is also one contributor. Therefore, the professionals have a huge duty to make people aware of the causes as well as the consequences to develop their health literacy and help them become fit physically and mentally.
Role of the Ottawa Charter in Obesity Prevention
The first international Conference on health promotion was held in the nation of Ottawa in Canada in the month of November in the year 1984. The conference was primarily due to a response for the growing expectations of a new public health movement around the world. In result of this, the Ottawa charter was formed and Ottawa Conference is mainly considered one of the five international Health Promotion conferences that explored key health promotion strategies or the issues (Eckerman, 2017). Health promotion is one of the most important processes of enabling people for increasing control over their health and activities and thereby improves health. Primary health care nurses should take upon the duty of educating individuals with such disorder following the key principles areas of Ottawa charter so that an environment is developed where patients gets support from every sphere to align with the goals and objectives of successful prevention and cure from obesity (Kalanrati et al., 2017).
One of the most important strategies that the nurse should take for obesity prevention is development of personal skills. Through this stage, the primary healthcare nurse would be mainly helping individuals to lean and thereby prepare themselves in ways by which they can manage and cope up with the illness and at the same time uptake activities that prevent the occurrence of the disorder in the individuals. In this stage, the primary healthcare nurse would be helping individuals to develop health literacy about the causes of the disorder and thereby learn the consequences that obesity may have on their lives. After educating them, the nurse would help them by giving them suggestions about the lifestyle interventions that they would take like physical activities, jogging in the park, going to gymnasiums, undertaking physical exercises and many others (Roberto et al., 2015). Diet management is also important like up taking of food that are low on calories and high on nutrients, avoiding processed foods and fast foods and many others. This education can be given to individuals in the primary care centres, GP clinics and similar other areas.
Another important strategy is the strengthening of the community actions. The nurse should actively participate in the community development by drawing on the existing human as well as material resources for enhancing the self-help as well as support services and thereby develop flexible systems for strengthening of public participation in the health matters. This involves full as well as continuous access to information and even learning opportunities for health and funding scopes. In order to develop the community participation, the school communities may be requested to serve food in the canteen that are high on nutrition but low on calorific food like burgers and sweetened drinks. Moreover, the workplace in the communities can be requested to ensure that employees get time to get up from their seat and gave small walks in between the working times (Hawkes et al., 2015). The offices should also be requested to develop activity and physical fitness centre where they can keep equipments to keep their employees fit. Many organisations as Google has already adapted this style and are therefore helping their employees to prevent obesities. The communities should be also helped to develop parks where older people can jog or undertake physical exercised along with little children helping them to develop healthy lives. Besides, the nurses can also participate in the health education programs in the community clubs where people of the community would be the main audience. The nurses would provide important referrals so that the patients can go there to overcome depression due to obesity, dieticians, and many others.
Developing Personal Skills to Manage Obesity
The next step is called the creation of the supportive environment. The nurses as the primary healthcare professionals have the duty to protect the natural as well as the built environments. Thereby, conservation of the natural resources needs to be addressed as one of the most important healthcare priority areas. Often, it is found that processed food as well as fast foods are cheaper but are less nutritious and high in calories. However, for low socio-economic people they become the first option when their financial power is low to buy organic food (Seidel et al., 2015). Hence, this issue should be advocated by the nursing professionals where they can help in initiating systems by which all the people of the society irrespective of the socioeconomic class has equal access to nutritious high quality food so that they do not live on processed foods. Moreover, healthcare access should be made easily available to all individuals irrespective of their social, cultural as well as economical status so that they can get support when they require. Moreover, the nursing professionals should also advocate free campaigns of screening issues where patients can at least understand their health status that is whether they have normal, overweight or obese status and take place accordingly. Free checks ups can be arranged once a month in the community so that the entire environment gets supportive of helping patients to live a better quality life (Fry & Zask, 2016). The broadcasting corporation should be asked to filter out advertisements that fuel the unhealthy habits of fast food and sweetened drinking and this would help in creating a better environment for children and adolescents.
One of another important strategy that the nurse can also take is to build a healthy public policy that would include complementary approaches that would include legislation, taxation, fiscal measures, organisational changes and many others. Although they do not have direct hands in development of policies but they can advocate for the various barriers and the challenges that individuals can face in their daily lives to the local authorities, policy makers and many others. These challenges can prevent the individuals from taking up good habits like organisational work pressures making them have takeaway food, no time for physical activity and many others. There might be financial issues faced by different classes of people. Moreover, there might be also people who love eating fast foods, as they are tastier (Wilkisch et al., 2015). Thereby policies to instruct organisations to take necessary changes in work culture, levying taxes on the fast foods and processed foods and decreasing the price of organic fresh foods would help. Moreover, penalties when advertising unhealthy foods will help the broadcasting media to be careful about what they show people and these policies would help to have positive outcomes on societies.
Strengthening Community Actions for Obesity Prevention
The last strategy where the nursing professionals can take active participation is the reorientation of the health services. Here the rile of the nursing professionals would be to increasingly move in the direction of health promotion by going beyond the duty of providing clinical as well as curative service. For these, the professionals would ensure stronger attention to health researches on the topics of obesity and thereby undertake professional education and training by which they can ensure effective communication, patient education and discussion skills. This would help the health care centres to meet the patient needs in ways by which patients feel satisfied (Kalantari et al., 2017).
From the entire discussion above, it becomes clear that obesity is becoming one of the leading problems of the nation. Therefore, primary healthcare services and nursing professionals are advised to take active initiatives to control the disorder. Therefore, they should follow the five strategies proposed by Ottawa charter to ensure development of health promotion initiatives that would help to reduce the prevalence and make the nation a safe one.
References:
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Eckermann, E. (2017). Global health promotion in the era of ‘galloping populism’. Health promotion international, Vol 32(3), 415-418. https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/dax030
Flynn, M. A. (2015). Empowering people to be healthier: public health nutrition through the Ottawa Charter. Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, Vol 74(3), pp 303-312 https://doi.org/10.1017/S002966511400161X
Fry, D., & Zask, A. (2016). Applying the Ottawa Charter to inform health promotion programme design. Health promotion international, Vol 32(5), pp 901-912. https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/daw022
Gagné, T., & Lapalme, J. (2017). 1986: Ottawa and onwards. The Lancet Public Health, 2(2), e71. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(17)30008-7
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Kalantari, N., Mohammadi, N. K., Rafieifar, S., Eini-Zinab, H., Aminifard, A., Malmir, H., … & Doaei, S. (2017). Indicator for success of obesity reduction programs in adolescents: Body composition or body mass index? evaluating a school-based health promotion project after 12 weeks of intervention. International journal of preventive medicine, 8. doi: 10.4103/ijpvm.IJPVM_306_16
Maximova, K., Hanusaik, N., Kishchuk, N., Paradis, G., & O’Loughlin, J. L. (2016). Public health strategies promoting physical activity and healthy eating in Canada: are we changing paradigms?. International journal of public health, Vol 61(5), pp 565-572. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-016-0826-8
Roberto, C. A., Swinburn, B., Hawkes, C., Huang, T. T., Costa, S. A., Ashe, M., … & Brownell, K. D. (2015). Patchy progress on obesity prevention: emerging examples, entrenched barriers, and new thinking. The Lancet, 385(9985), pp 2400-2409. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(14)61744-X
Seidell, J. C., & Halberstadt, J. (2015). The global burden of obesity and the challenges of prevention. Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism, Vol 66(Suppl. 2), pp 7-12. https://doi.org/10.1159/000375143
Thompson, S. R., Watson, M. C., & Tilford, S. (2018). The Ottawa Charter 30 years on: still an important standard for health promotion. International Journal of Health Promotion and Education, Vol 56(2), pp 73-84. https://doi.org/10.1080/14635240.2017.1415765
Wilksch, S. M., Paxton, S. J., Byrne, S. M., Austin, S. B., McLean, S. A., Thompson, K. M., … & Wade, T. D. (2015). Prevention across the spectrum: A randomized controlled trial of three programs to reduce risk factors for both eating disorders and obesity. Psychological Medicine, 45(9), 1811-1823.reterieved from: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/prevention-across-the-spectrum-a-randomized-controlled-trial-of-three-programs-to-reduce-risk-factors-for-both-eating-disorders-and-obesity/190791E9987BE7735E355A755426A52
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