Childhood Obesity and its Implications

This article discusses the causes, determinants, and healthcare practices related to childhood obesity and its implications on children's health. It explores the role of diet, physical activity, socio-economic status, and cultural factors in the prevalence of obesity. The article also highlights the importance of positive attitudes and interventions by healthcare providers in addressing childhood obesity. Various interventions and their effectiveness are discussed, along with the need for a multidisciplinary approach to obesity management. References to relevant studies are provided.

Associate Degree Health and Science
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Assignment essay
Title : Childhood obesity and its implications.
Selection of health issue and population group :
Childhood obesity is one of the most epidemic condition worldwide. It is most prevalent
chronic condition which affects childhood. Most outstandingly, childhood obesity transmits
its effects through adulthood. Childhood obesity is associated with other complications like
T2DM, dyslipidemia, hypertension, sleep apnea, and fatty liver disease. Hence, childhood
obesity would affect productivity of the children in school and impacts overall quality of life
of the children. Children are considered as obese children, if BMI is equal to or greater than
95th percentile of age. Children are considered as overweight children, if BMI is equal to or
greater than 85th and 95th percentile of age. Choice of food is mainly responsible for the
occurrence of obesity in the children. Moreover, it is evident that children in the private
schools are more prevalent to obesity as compared to the Government funded schools
because children in the private schools are associated with selection food responsible for the
occurrence of obesity (Kumar and Kelly, 2017). Weigh gain mainly occurs due to imbalance
in energy consumption and energy expenditure. Obesity is a complex disease to treat because
its pathogenesis is multifactorial; moreover, genetic and environmental factors play
prominent role in the occurrence of obesity.
Determinants:
Various determinants which affects obesity are diet, physical activity, socio-economic status
and traditional culture. Child’s selection of food and the food environment play significant
role in obesity. Parents are mainly responsible for the selection of food and eating behaviour
in children. Parents need to have healthy food habit to influence the food habit of their
children. Children of obese parents are usually at high risk of obesity which is predictive as
the adult obesity (Kelsey, Zaepfel, Bjornstad, and Nadeau, 2014). Projecting advertising
practices and the high-energy dense food with low cost are mainly responsible for the
consumption of food with high saturated fat and sweetened carbonated beverages. Children in
the private school are highly exposed to fast food at their school cafeteria. Awareness about
the effects of low quality and energy dense food among the parents and teachers would be
helpful in reducing obesity; however, parents and teachers are not willing to update their
knowledge about the child obesity. In the recent past, it has been observed that interest of
children altered from outdoor games to the indoor interests like television, internet, and
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computer games. As a result of increasing population, there is increase in the buildings;
hence, there is scarcity of playgrounds in the societies and schools. Augmented burden of
academics also responsible for the reduced physical activity among the children (Ip et al.,
2017). Socio-economic status of the children demonstrated dual effect on the obesity in the
children. Children in the low socio-economic class are prone to obesity development due to
consumption of low-quality food and lack of physical activity. On other hand, children in the
high socioeconomic class are prone to obesity development due to more inclination towards
the western life-style. Moreover, increased prevalence of obesity in the high socio-economic
class children is mainly due to the more amount of pocket money, arranged domestic help
and availability of school buses. Tradition and culture also play significant part in the
prevalence of obesity. There is a common myth that fatty child is a healthy child which can
lead to development of obesity in the fatty child. There is a common belief that energy dense
foods like oils, ghee and butter are the necessary for strength and proper growth.
Healthcare practice:
Public health interventions play significant role in addressing childhood obesity. Perception
and attitudes of nurses towards obese children were evaluated using the Fat Phobia Scale and
Obese Child Patient Scale respectively. Registered nurses demonstrated more fat phobia
towards child obesity as compared to the student nurses. Moreover, registered nurses
demonstrated more negative attitude towards child obesity in comparison to the student
nurses. Nurses have perception that obese children are like more food, binged, shapeless,
slow and unpleasant. However, nurse should demonstrate positive attitude towards obese
children to provide effective intervention to control obesity. Nurse need to demonstrate more
positive approach towards obese children because obese children are more stigmatized and
experience discrimination from peers and community members. As a result of negative
perception and attitude of nurse and other healthcare providers towards childhood obesity;
there are chances of lack of competency among them for the management of obesity due to
lack of required experience. It is evident that both physicians and nurses lacked the
knowledge to diagnose childhood obesity and proper training and confidence for the
management of obesity (Tanda, Beverly, and Hughes, 2017).
Attitude of the healthcare providers need to be positive for childhood obesity management
because healthcare service needs to be provided in the integrated manner to the children.
Healthcare service need to be provided to the children by considering physical, behavioural,
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genetic, socio-economic and environmental factors of the families with childhood obesity.
However, it can be argued that lack of genetic model to understand the evolutionary aspects
of obesity in children made it difficult to provide effective obesity prevention practice.
Moreover, lack of correlation between theoretical and empirical psychological issues for the
prevalence of childhood obesity made it problematic for the healthcare providers to address
psychological aspects while implementing obesity management practice in children.
Healthcare providers need to work with parents and school teacher for effective
implementation of the childhood obesity management programme. Healthcare providers need
to demonstrate positive practices through self-development to overcome barriers for obesity
management in the children. Self-development of healthcare providers would be helpful in
improving knowledge and skills for childhood obesity management and improving
involvement of parents in the childhood obesity management. Physicians and nurse believed
that they need to undergo training to provide counselling for nutrition and physical activity to
obese children. Hence, they need to work along with nutritionist and physical trainer for the
effective management of the childhood obesity. Inadequate knowledge of nutrition and
physical activity among the healthcare providers would lead to improper implementation of
the healthcare management programme (AlOtaibi et al., 2017).
Healthcare providers perceived that hopelessness of family members of obese children is
mainly responsible for the ineffective implementation of the obesity control programme
because mere medical management would not be helpful in obesity management. Since,
obesity is a multifactorial disease; healthcare providers perceived that training to the parents
and discussion with the parent about childhood obesity would be helpful in effective
implementation of childhood obesity programme. Such activities would be helpful in future
recommendation for the practice implementation. Healthcare providers perceived that barriers
like time constraints, lack of management support and lack of speciality child obesity
department are responsible for the poor implementation of the obesity control programme.
However, healthcare providers need to put additional efforts to allocate more time for the
obesity management in children; moreover, they need to convince organisation management
for the implementation of the childhood obesity management programme. Healthcare
providers seek development of effective assessment tool, development of practice guidelines,
improvement in medical education curriculum and change in the healthcare system for the
implementation of effective obesity control programme (Gies et al., 2017).
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It is evident that less than 50 % of children are advised by the healthcare providers to lose
weight. Mild obesity and overweight condition are the under-recognized and under-treated
conditions for childhood obesity. However, attitude of healthcare providers reflected that
childhood obesity would be attained by the healthcare providers if these conditions are
associated with other medical complications. Hence, healthcare providers need to give
attention to childhood overweight and obese condition irrespective of the other medical
conditions (Hagman et al., 2017; Anderson, 2018).
Interventions were carried out to address childhood obesity. However, most of these
interventions proved ineffective because most of these interventions target only children.
Parents of the obese children were not considered while providing interventions. Attitude,
belief, behaviour and perception of the parents need to be changed to control childhood
obesity. Healthcare providers need to understand this aspect while providing obesity control
practice to the children. Parents are the most important factors for childhood obesity
prevention practice because parents are primary source for altering children’s food choice and
food environment. Few of the interventions were failed because in these interventions
emphasis was given to the weight reduction in children while attention was not given to the
psycho-behavioural aspects of the children (Staiano et al., 2017).
References:
AlOtaibi, F.N., AlOtaibi, M., AlAnazi, S., Al-Gethami, H., AlAteeq, D., …Siddiqui, A.R.
(2017). Childhood and adolescent obesity: Primary Health Care Physicians'
perspectives from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences, 33(1),
100-105.
Anderson, K.L. (2018). A Review of the Prevention and Medical Management of Childhood
Obesity. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 27(1), 63-76.
Gies, I., AlSaleem, B., Olang, B., Karima, B., Samy, G., …and Vandenplas, Y. (2017). Early
childhood obesity: a survey of knowledge and practices of physicians from the Middle
East and North Africa. BMC Pediatrics, 17(1), 115.
Hagman, E., Danielsson, P., Brandt, L., Svensson, V., Ekbom, A.,… and Marcus, C. (2017).
Childhood Obesity, Obesity Treatment Outcome, and Achieved Education: A
Prospective Cohort Study. Journal of Adolescent Health, 61(4), 508-513.
Ip, P., Ho, F.K., Louie, L.H., Chung, T.W., Cheung, Y.F., …and Jiang, F. (2017). Childhood
Obesity and Physical Activity-Friendly School Environments. Journal of Pediatrics,
191, 110-116.
Kelsey, M.M., Zaepfel, A., Bjornstad, P., and Nadeau, K.J. (2014). Age-related
consequences of childhood obesity. Gerontology, 60(3), 222-8.
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Kumar, S., and Kelly, A.S. (2017). Review of Childhood Obesity: From Epidemiology,
Etiology, and Comorbidities to Clinical Assessment and Treatment. Mayo Clinic
Proceedings, 92(2), 251-265.
Staiano, A., Marker, A., Liu, M., Hayden, E., Hsia, D.,… Broyles S. Childhood Obesity
Screening and Treatment Practices of Pediatric Healthcare Providers. Journal of the
Louisiana State Medical Society, 169(1), 2-10
Tanda, R., Beverly, E.A., and Hughes, K. (2017). Factors associated with Ohio nurse
practitioners' childhood obesity preventive practice patterns. Journal of the American
Association of Nurse Practitioners, 29(12), 763-772.
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Assessment task 2
Unfamiliar terms:
R-CHOP chemotherapy is the unfamiliar term. R-CHOP is usually used for the combination
treatment for non-Hodgkin lymphoma. R-CHOP can be given through intravenous route and
can be administered through tablets (Eichenauer and Engert, 2017). Deconditioned is another
unfamiliar word. Meaning of deconditioned is losing fitness or muscle tone. This term is
unfamiliar because this term is not in regular use.
The multidisciplinary team:
Multidisciplinary team work is necessary for alternative and patient centric healthcare
delivery models. Patient centric healthcare delivery model is most widely used model for the
provision of healthcare services in Australia. Shift towards to the patient-centric
multidisciplinary team occurs in Australia due to increased aging population, shift from the
institutional care to the community-based care and abundant availability of the information
related to the patient centred care. In case of older patients like Soula, care need to be
provided for chronic and complex disease management. Moreover, long-term and palliative
care need to be provided for the patients like Soula. Multidisciplinary team need to be
incorporated in care of Soula because she is associated with comorbidities. Hence, different
healthcare and allied healthcare professionals need to be incorporated in care of Soula.
Involvement of multidisciplinary team in the care of Soula would be helpful in reducing
hospital readmissions and reducing cost of care for Soula. Patient-centred care need to be
provided considering the healthcare needs and necessary health outcomes of the patient.
Multidisciplinary need to perform holistic assessment of Soula for understanding health
needs of Soula and establish optimum outcome goals for Soula. Multidisciplinary team need
to consider not only clinical aspects but also other aspects like emotional, mental, spiritual,
social, and financial aspects of Soula (Jennings and Astin, 2017). Involvement of
multidisciplinary care in patient centred care in Soula require effective communication
among all the team members to explore all the therapeutic options and care can be provided
based on the adequate information related to care. Involvement of family members would be
helpful in providing patient centred care; however, older age of Soula would not allow her in
clinical decision making related to her care. Son’s of Soula can be involved in her clinical
decision making. In Australia, nationwide multidisciplinary care projects were implemented
for cancer management. Hence, it would be feasible for effective implementation of person-
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centred multidisciplinary care for Soula. Effectiveness of multidisciplinary care is well
documented in other clinical conditions like cardiovascular condition. Previous medical
history of Soula mentioned about her cardiovascular abnormalities. Hence, multidisciplinary
care can be effectively implemented to Soula for all the clinical conditions. Evidence
indicated that multidisciplinary care has been proved effective in improving quality of life in
cancer patients; hence, it is useful in improving patient satisfaction (Chiew, Sundaresan,
Jalaludin, and Vinod, 2018; Bilodeau and Tremblay, 2019).
Patient:
Soula has been experiencing lethargy due to her chemotherapy and older age. Moreover, she
was not able to take proper food because difficulty in swallowing. Hence, with every meal
she was consuming very less food. As a result of less consumption of food; she might be
experiencing weakness and exhaustion. For carrying out normal activities like preparing
food, personal care, walking to the bathroom; Soula need to have enough energy. Since, she
was not consuming enough food; it would be difficult for her to carry out all these activities
(Herath, Peswani, and Chitambar, 2016).
Past medical history:
Past medical history of Soula indicate that she was suffering through dyslipidaemia;
moreover, six years ago she suffered mild stroke. She was consuming statins because she was
associated with dyslipidaemia. She was also consuming aspirin tablet daily.
Chemotherapeutic agents are associated with different cardiovascular complications like
congestive heart failure (CHF), Left Ventricular (LV) dysfunction, ischemia, hypertension,
arrythmias, edema, bradycardia and Deep vein thrombosis (DVT). All these drugs induced
cardiovascular complications are related to dyslipidaemia and stroke. Hence, continuous
monitoring is necessary for the healthcare professionals while providing chemotherapy to
Soula because chemotherapy might exaggerate her cardiovascular complication (Babiker et
al., 2018).
Social history:
Provided information indicate that Soula is socially isolated. She is a widowed and she is not
staying with her two sons. However, her sons are visiting her on regular basis. People with
her age need to be accompanied with other persons to take care of her because her clinical
condition is not allowing her to perform her regular activities. Moreover, she is not able to
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consume food properly. Hence, food suitable for her condition need to be prepared. Hence,
social worker needs to take initiative and arrange suitable person to accompany her while
sending her home (Yamauchi, Nakagawa, and Fukuda, 2017).
Recovery goals : Recovery goals for Soula include healthy eating, provision of support group
and minimising cardiovascular complications. Healthy eating is necessary for her because she
is not consuming proper food. Her recovery can be achieved, if she starts eating proper food.
For her complete recovery, support group need to be provided to her because she is staying
alone and nobody is there to take care of her. Monitoring of cardiovascular conditions is
necessary in her because chemotherapy produces cardiovascular complications.
Chemotherapy can cure her cancer; however, at the same time there can be exaggerated
cardiovascular complications in her. Hence, her complete recovery is not feasible (Mix et al.,
2017).
Patient viewpoint:
Soula might be stressed due to her overall health condition because she is suffering through
medical and physical complications. Stress can also impact her cancer outcome because
psychological stress can weaken her immune system and exaggerate cancer and weaken the
chemotherapy effect in Soula. She might not be ready to adhere to her treatment because
older patients usually are not willing to adhere to treatment. She might be feeling loneliness
and depression because she is staying alone and her clinical condition become complicated
due to multiple clinical complications. She might be seeking for sociability to share her
feelings.
References:
Babiker, H.M., McBride, A., Newton, M., Boehmer, L.M., Drucker, A.G., Gowan, M.,… and
Hollands, J.M. Cardiotoxic effects of chemotherapy: A review of both cytotoxic and
molecular targeted oncology therapies and their effect on the cardiovascular system.
Critical Reviews in Oncology/Hematology, 126, 186-200.
Bilodeau, K., and Tremblay, D. (2019). How oncology teams can be patient-centred?
opportunities for theoretical improvement through an empirical examination. Health
expectations, 22(2), 235-244.
Chiew, K.L., Sundaresan, P., Jalaludin, B., and Vinod, S.K. (2018). A narrative synthesis of
the quality of cancer care and development of an integrated conceptual framework.
European Journal of Cancer Care, 27(6):e12881. doi: 10.1111/ecc.12881.
Eichenauer, D.A., and Engert, A. (2017). R-CHOP in NLPHL: who should receive it? Blood,
130(4):387-388.
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Herath, K., Peswani, N., and Chitambar, C.R. (2016). Impact of obesity and exercise on
chemotherapy-related fatigue. Support Care Cancer, 24(10), 4257-62.
Jennings, C., and Astin, F. (2017). A multidisciplinary approach to prevention. European
Association of Preventive Cardiology, 24(3), 77-87.
Mix, J.M., Granger, C.V., LaMonte, M.J., Niewczyk, P., DiVita, M.A., … and Freudenheim
JL. Characterization of Cancer Patients in Inpatient Rehabilitation Facilities: A
Retrospective Cohort Study. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 98(5),
971-980.
Yamauchi, H., Nakagawa, C., and Fukuda, T. (2017). Social impacts of the work loss in
cancer survivors. Breast Cancer, 24(5), 694-701.
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