Curbing the Rise in Overweight and Obesity

This article discusses the issue of overweight and obesity in Australia, particularly among children and adolescents. It explores the causes and consequences of obesity and proposes a program to address the issue. The article also highlights the importance of healthy eating habits and physical activity in preventing obesity. The target group for the program is children under 5 years and adolescents up to 16 years. The article emphasizes the need for societal change and policy interventions to promote healthy weight among children and teens.

Running head: CURBING THE RISE IN OVERWEIGHT AND OBESITY 1
Curbing the Rise in Overweight and Obesity
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation

CURBING THE RISE IN OVERWEIGHT AND OBESITY 2
Assessing the Needs
Obesity is a health menace that has affected the Australian population especially the children and
the adolescents for a very long time. It is usually because of many complex, systems that are
made by human being including but not limited to supply of food, transport, urban design, and
governance system. All these factors have the potential to be re-oriented to make better
populations and environments.
According to WHO (2018), the reports highlight that overweight and obesity are becoming a
significant health issue. Overweight and obesity can bring a range of health issues to human
wellbeing such as Diabetes, Stroke, Coronary Artery disease and other vascular events which can
result to drastic health issues to humans (World, 2018). Surprisingly obesity and overweight is
becoming much common among children (under 5) and adolescents (5-15) because of the
improper nutrition patterns, lack of physical activities and increase the use of TV games and
computer games so that they are dominated by sedentary lifestyle (World, 2018). Reports reveal
that over 340 million children and adolescents were overweight or obese, and the distribution is
the same among both boys and girls.
In Western Australia, Childhood obesity remains a tragedy since 2004 and a significant amount
of 241 million spent on the issue. WA (2017) estimates that this would double to 488.4 million
by 2021. Obesity is a preventable disease and implementations are quite easy to apply on a
targeted group and cost effective such as increasing physical activity and diet controlling
measures (World, 2018).
According to WA (2017), in 2015, 67% of the adults having the age of 16 years and above were
categorized as overweight- 40% and obese accounting for 27%. This was dependent upon height

CURBING THE RISE IN OVERWEIGHT AND OBESITY 3
and weight. The statistics also show that the males were at a higher probability of becoming
obese or overweight compared to the females. The overweight and obese rates have significantly
increased over the years, driven by a general elevation in the body mass index. On the other
hand, in the same year, 22% of children aged between 5-15 years were categorized as
overweight-16% or obese-6%. Over the last decade, the statics show that the rate of children who
are overweight or obese have relatively remained stable. The rate of overweight or obese was
required to be higher among individuals living in remote or rural areas, a number of overseas
born populations and people found to have profound disability
WA (2017) note that a healthy diet has significant contribution to maintaining a healthy weight
and lifestyle, however, a significant number of people in western Australia are rarely consuming
a diet recommended by Australian dietary guidelines. The statistics also shows that way back in
2011 and 2012, the Australian population got over one third of the energy from food and drinks
that are discretionary. More than a half of the Australian populations were recorded to have
exceeded the WHO recommendations regarding sugars intake having around half of the sugars
consumed coming from beverages such as soft drinks.
A sedentary lifestyle was also recorded to significantly contribute to obesity and overweight.
Close to 40% individuals were found not to have sufficiently active and 43 % was recorded to be
spending most of their time during the day sitting and relaxing (WA, 2017)
The target group is a group of young children under 5 years and adolescents up to 16 years. It has
been recorded that there is significant number of children below 5 years and even adolescents up
to age 16 years that are immensely struggling with the obese menace if not overweight
(McCalman et al., 2017). The reason why such a program evaluation for this specific group of
individuals is because it is a very sensitive age that holds the future of western Australia. If this

CURBING THE RISE IN OVERWEIGHT AND OBESITY 4
groups of individuals are not helped today, the future of the nation will be in a mess and
problems. The reason why it is the most prudent thing to consider the group is because
significant number of those who have had obesity ended up developing very serious
complications like cardiovascular diseases while they are very young. The essence to have this
issue being addressed is to help bring prosperity not just today but also tomorrow and the rest of
the day they will stay alive (WA, 2017).
Some of the behavioral factors that would contribute to the condition according to Brand-Miller,
and Barclay (2017) are poor eating habits, poor eating habit as noted by Lobstein et al. (2015) is
eating behavior that do not confirm to the eating dietary guideline. For example, concentrating
more on eating processed food and forgetting the most essential food supplements that carry
large amount of nutrient that is essential for the body development.
Setting the Goal
The proposed program that has a potential of becoming instrumental in addressing this issue is
ensuring that all the children under 5 years are monitored from the time they are born to the time
they get to weaning stage and to five years of age. This would involve monitoring on their body
weight and the rightful amount and type of food they eat (Macvean, Shlonsky, Mildon & Devine,
2017). This could be made possible by booking appointments in hospitals for every mother that
delivers in a hospital. It would serve best if the monitoring will be conducted from the home set
up especially after basic treatments have been done (Tsiros & Shultz, 2019). For the adolescents
up to 16 years, there will be a need to organize school educational programs that will be more
practical than just theoretical. For example, during the educational programs, the educating
officers should consider developing the habit into the young people’s lives by carrying along the
kind of the food they require them to eat (Peirson et al., 2015). It will serve as an example of the

CURBING THE RISE IN OVERWEIGHT AND OBESITY 5
kind of food for them. Also, perform any practical experiments that would prove that processed
food might be doing more harm than good in anyone who is a frequent consumer.
Goal: To create an environmental behavioral synergy using societal change in fostering the
achievement and maintenance of healthy weight among children under five years and
adolescents of up to 16 years.
The goal has deep focused reflection of obesity prevention development that is regarded as
primary prevention (Gifford et al., 2018). According to Dyer et al. (2017) primary prevention
puts emphasis on the strategies that increases the chances of shifting physical activity, eating and
eight management among children and the adolescents of that specific group (Renzaho, Halliday,
Mellor & Green (2015).
Lubans et al. (2016) also note that the logic beginning prevention of obesity is self-evident. at
every given stage of life, from childhood on ward, excess weight and sustained obesity have a
higher chance of increasing an individual’s risk of longer term obesity.
Setting Objectives
To advocate for gradual working to changing family eating habits and activities instead of
focusing on the weight of the children and the teens.
To formulate policies that will require that every school going children participates in healthy
activities like intensive regular exercising: thrice in a week.
To advocate for mother children accountability in monitoring of the kind of food children and
the teens eat; this will develop a habit even when they become adults.

CURBING THE RISE IN OVERWEIGHT AND OBESITY 6
Intervention Strategies
It is important to identify the behavioral and environmental variables that have notable
contribution to the population wide obesity epidemic and how they have an influence on the
children and the teens. Only after identifying this that there will be appropriate interceptions that
are promising.
According to Nahar, Khan and Hossain, (2017), homes and families are usually listed as the
behavioral settings that can be used as a source of transformation practice in preventing obesity.
However, they also note that there is need for change of the setting if at all this realization should
become effective. It is important that we have the settings that can accelerate the prevention of
obesity by improving options for healthy physical activity and eating habits. Similarly, there is
also the need to facilitate both the family, household and individual levels, and of course ever
considering their independence.
Olds, Schranz and Maher (2017) recognizes that obesity is not just a burden to the individuals
and the government but also for private and business sectors. There will be need therefore for
updating the sectors of influence on obesity. This will enable potential contribution of business
apart from those that are directly involved in the products manufacturing that are in relation with
food and physical activity. For instance, the business enterprises that provided catering platforms
for eating including children’s eateries, sporty clubs, and public eateries. All these sectors have a
great role in changing food availability and various norms regarding consumption of food.
Additionally, the employers of both the private the public sector will be expected to foster
working environments that promote heathy living lifestyle including physical work setting,
schedules and health insurance covers that specifically enhances management of weight
management to both children and the teens who dash into some of these avenues for employees.

CURBING THE RISE IN OVERWEIGHT AND OBESITY 7
in addition to this, it is important for apart to act as a role model. Parents who have a habit of a
carrying home processed food or unhealthy food from their work places, poses danger to the
consequential habit for their children. The children will also observe what the parents does and
they will go in that line.
Prevention of obesity in communities and populations requires a social change (Partridge &
Redfern, 2018). Children and teens have all it takes to learn from the societal dynamics and this
significantly contribute to the way they interact with life and anything they eat. The strategies
that will be employed are necessary and like those that are applicable to other situations where
varied actions are required to affect the environment and the specific rules that have a significant
impact on them. There will be a need to integrate the fooling levels in attempt to achieve the
desired results: legislative and policy approaches; policies involving organization change and
policies involving structural change in the kind of structures that have been laid the society that
substantially hinder children and teen’s attempts to overcome obesity.
Lastly, there will be a need to formulate and establish strict policies regarding pupils exercising
in schools. Jayawardena et al. (2017) observes that because most of the children under five years
and the teens/adolescents up to 16 years will be fud in school, the struct program on pupil and
students exercising will be developed so that it will be compulsory fir everyone to involve in
vigorous exercises. The logic behind this is that it will help those children who are not used o
exercising in their homes especially those that live in the city set up to get some good and
valuable time to exercise.
Evaluation

CURBING THE RISE IN OVERWEIGHT AND OBESITY 8
Formative Impact Process
 Because this is a new
program formative
type of evaluation will
be employed.
 This will involve
providing judgment of
the viability of the
program through
initial observation.
This will be possible
as the program tends
to be viewed in
various dimensions
for examine, the
workability of the
school programs on
exercises.
 It will involve
collecting pre- and
post-data. For
example, collection of
the previous data on
the findings of the
previous program and
ne the findings for the
new program and then
compare to determine
whether there is any
significant
improvement
 Statistical data will be
used. Particularly
those from credible
sources
 It will involve
examining the effects
that the program will
have had on the target
population’s health. It
will involve
examining how the
target population has
been impacted for the
certain period that the
program will be in
operation. It is only by
this that it will be
possible to tell
whether the program
has worked or nit.
Depending in the
timeframe, the
outcomes will
determine of whether
there has been
implementation of

CURBING THE RISE IN OVERWEIGHT AND OBESITY 9
what the program
initially targeted.
 Statistical data will be
used. Particularly
those from credible
sources

CURBING THE RISE IN OVERWEIGHT AND OBESITY 10
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