Children’s Body Mass Index (BMI)

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Health Promotion Program
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction
Health promotion programs aim to inspire people to take control of their lives and
improve their health. The Ottawa Charter is one kind of international agreement for Health
Promotion that was organized by World Health Organization (WHO) in 1986, held in
Ottawa, Canada. The chosen program which follows the Ottawa Charter Action is Obesity
Prevention and Prevention Lifestyle (OPAL) in South Australia. This program was aimed to
engage in healthy eating and increase physical activity among children to prevent obesity.
This essay aims to evaluate an existing health promotion plan,that is OPAL program,
targeting obesity in the population of interest, that is, 12 to 18 year olds who are over the
normal weight.
Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion Action Areas
The main objective of the Ottawa Charter Health Promotion was to find out action to
accomplish the goals of the World Health Organization (WHO) Health for all. This
conference was initially held to meet the growing needs of a new public health programme
worldwide. It has six priority action areas in order to evaluate and structure health promotion
plans. This action area works on the three basic strategies that are advocate, enable and
mediate for promoting a new health programme (WHO | The Ottawa Charter for Health
Promotion, 2020).
Build Healthy Public Policy
This priority action area is related to proposing policies and making people aware
with the help of legislation, organizational change and others. Health promotion policy is
required to detect the obstruction to the adaptation of healthy public guidelines in the non-
government or rural community region. This also identifies the ways to minimize the
problem. The Health Promotion Program chosen for the investigation in this case is the

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Obesity Prevention and Lifestyle (OPAL) Program in South Australia, targeting children
between 0 to 18 years of age (Government of South Australia, 2020). The OPAL program
delivered their public health plans under the South Australian Public Health Act 2011. The
goals were focused on healthy food habits and the being active, which included the
availability of healthier food options at the restaurants and markets, as well as program to
encourage physical activities and use of parks. It includes planning of an educational program
that includes obesity-focused questions. A series of clinical counselling in the primary health
services can help the children to advocate about the matter (Kar, Dube & Kar, 2014). This, in
turn, will increase the percentage of health literacy amongst the population. Overall scenario
will provide empowerment to the people as they will be conscious about their health. As a
consequence, it will be helpful to promote a new health program that is targeted to them.
Create Supportive Environments
This entails encouraging the community to take care of each other towards a healthier
lifestyle. The OPAL program encouraged everyone to take care of each other by creating a
supportive environment in the states that took up the program (OPAL:SA health, 2020). The
EWBA Community Programs were introduced that were associated with pre-schools and
school going children for prevention of obesity in South Australia. After that, the
Government initiated the OPAL program that focused on community-based childhood
prevention session. This program aimed to enhance the healthy eating and physical activity
among the families as well as societies. These activities also concentrated on the deprived
populations that also helped to create a supportive environment to promote a health plan. A
social ecological framework was selected that is connected to various kinds of environments
such as societies, institutions, families (Bell et al., 2019). This program will enhance to
understand the matter more deeply not only by education but also the people can empower
themselves cognitively. The implementation of the OPAL program will increase the parents’

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literacy about health. It can thus enhance the necessity of healthy food preparation for their
children and make available and increase accessibility of fresh vegetables, fruits rather than
junk foods.
Strengthen Community Action
This refers to effective and united community action. A community has a significant
role in any health promotion system. Human and material sources are required to improve
social support and individual help. These properties also help to develop different flexible
strategies for establishing firm community participation related to health matters. The OPAL
program was adopted by the community leaders in the target state who were ready to make a
change. Weight height and BMI was calculated for the suburbs and a community-wide plan
was implemented. A community capacity building (CCB) approach was implemented in that
community. This approach dedicated to engage community participation, built a society
ownership, and enhanced skills in that community. The OPAL has involved the participants
on other projects that also reinforced the community to adapt healthy eating and active
physically. One of the programs related with this involved providing knowledge of the free
places in Murray Bridge community people. Through this project, the community participants
were able to know about the free spaces available at that place like parks, space for walking,
cycling and spending active leisure (ABC news, 2016). This program helps to construct
knowledge and environments accompanied with others to maintain healthy livelihood.
Through this program children along with their families and societies came across the
concept of wellness of the total population.
Develop Personal Skills
This entails the encouragement of developing healthy behaviour throughout a
person’s life. It also enables to prevent any chronic illness like obesity. It is currently more
prone to the children due to consumption of unhealthy food and sedentary lifestyle. Therefore

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it is more important to increase personal awareness to enhance the health system. This
personal awareness has been facilitated by different manners. The awareness program can be
held in home, workplaces, schools, society settings. OPAL was a community-based
intervention program rather than an individually focused program. The OPAL program aimed
different age groups of children as pre-school, primary school, high schools children and then
community. The survey was performed for all these aspects. But in case of pre-schools the
parents of the children were assessed. For the high school students (14-16 years), student
survey was performed that helped to develop personal skills. After that, anthropometry that is
weight, height and waist circumstances have been measured (Leslie et al., 2015). Also the
educational program helped to increase their knowledge and encourage to active physically.
This also changed their food habits, improved behaviours towards fitness. Hence the effect
of this program on the individual behaviours of people was unclear.
Reorient Health Services
This entails that the health promotion plan moves in a proper direction and exceeds
the expectations. It describes the orientation of the program directs at the level of the health
promotion. The function of the health sectors such as Government, private organizations,
rural community settings is not confined to supporting health care and clinical services. Their
responsibility is much higher than that. Reorient health services also mentions stronger
responsiveness in the health research. It also requires subsequent changes in professional
training and education timely. The OPAL program was implemented across many states, but
the net result and success of the program was unclear. Although the statistical findings were
not significantly changed in the pre-school children’s Body Mass Index (BMI), the
probability of obesity was lower. It was observed that the prevalence of this disease was 53%
lower in the community with implemented program. The overall evaluation of this
community based approach was effective in minimizing the children’s overweight and

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obesity. This evaluation suggested that there was significantly reduction of prevalence of
overweight. The intervention investigation also reported that the minimized result of diabetes
prevalence was included in all statistical methods. All of the above results suggested that the
OPAL program had effectively increased the health literacy and education among the parents
as well as the children (sahealth, 2019).
Moving into the future
In any health care promotion plan, some approaches must be considered in this
account. Ecology, caring and holism are the vital issues for implementing any health care
plan. A regulatory model should be formed that is maintained for entire health system. One
such approach includes that men and women should be given equal priority in every step of
the system activities for planning, evaluation and implementation of the program. The OPAL
program continues to work via various sites under the South Australian Public Health Act
2011. The evaluation data and the exact impact of OPAL was unclear in many aspects, but it
was successful in reducing the prevalence of overweight children after the implementation.
The data about adolescents was unclear (World Health Organization, 2020).
Role of Nurses in the Program
In the OPAL program, the nurses play various roles such as in community education,
practices, consultation and follow up treatment, and prevention program(Aslani et al., 2016)..
Nursing practitioner can role play as counsellors and make a health chart according to the
patients’ needs. After each program, follow up treatment can be performed (Shani et al.,
2014). For example, the nurses can check the children’s BMI, body-weight, and investigate
their food habit every 6months. This, in turn, will increase the consciousness among the
parents.

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Conclusion
From the essay we can conclude that the Health Promotion Program chosen for the
investigation in this case is the Obesity Prevention and Lifestyle (OPAL) Program targeting
the children. The Ottawa Charter Actions are implemented in this program. This program
followed the South Australian Public Health Act 2011 to increase healthy food habits and
physically active. EWBA community program has helped to prevent obesity among children
and a CCB approach was implemented to engage community participation. Thus, this
program has increased health literacy, developed personal skills, encourage community
actions by introducing supporting environments that leads to promote a new health plan
among the deprived population and nurses play a significant role in providing care and
education.

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Reference
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