Family Centered Nursing and NSW Healthy Eating and Active Living Strategy

This article discusses the NSW Healthy Eating and Active Living Strategy and the role of family centered nursing in promoting healthy living. It also highlights the enablers and barriers in implementing the policy.

Running head: FAMILY CENTERED NURSING
FAMILY CENTERED NURSING
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Part 1:
Obesity is one of the most concerning health concerns in the nation of Australia which
had become the main risk factor for the increasing number of chronic disorders in the nation.
Hence, the government of NSW had taken an initiative to prevent the increasing prevalence of
obesity in the state through providing a whole government framework for promoting and
supporting healthy eating as well as active living in the state (Innes-Hughes et al., 2019). It had
helped in making people aware through expressing the statistics of obesity in the nation. In the
year 2011, 52.6% of the NSW adults had been already found to be overweight or obese whereas
in 2010, 22.8% of the children had been found to be already suffering from obesity. Hence, the
main vision set by the NSW Ministry of Health was to introduce the “The NSW Healthy Eating
and Active Living Strategy: Preventing overweight and obesity in New South Wales 2013-2018”
as a whole of government framework for the promotion as well as supporting the healthy eating
and active living in NSW for the reduction of the impact of lifestyle-related factors (Peralta et al.,
2016).
The main target of this policy is the communities of NSW. The policy had mainly aimed
in encouraging the as well as supporting the community for making healthy lifestyle changes not
only at the personal level but also promoted development of an environment that support. The
policy makers focused on creating supporting environments that would support healthier living
through better planning and developing many opportunities in the communities for active living
and initiating different transport solution (Thompson et al., 2015). Obesity is actually the health
condition when the body is seen to accumulate calories which are excessive to the amount of
calories burnt in daily lives. Present day researchers are of the opinion that people in
communities tend to live sedentary lives where most of the time they remain physically inactive

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and hence the amount of calories accumulated are not burnt and gets accumulated in body.
Moreover, intake of calorie dense foods and lack of green vegetables and fruits are the result n
increasing the calorie content of the body. Therefore, in order to control the prevalence of such
health conditions, they had set goals for managing obesity for every cohort of people in the
families. They had been found to set SMART goals with specific targets and even stipulated
timing like reduction of overweight and obesity rates among children by 2015, stabilizing the
rates of obesity and overweight in adults by 2015 (Lloyd et al., 2016). Even they had set goals
like increasing the participation in the sports and recreational activities and different cultural
activities in the regional and rural areas along with doubling the mode share of bicycle trips both
at local and district level by 2016. Similar such specific goals were mainly set to increase the
activity levels of the people on the communities increasing their chances of burning their calories
and living obesity free lives (Kite et al., 2015).
The policy makers had been found to focus on four important strategic directions in
order to provide support environment to the people so that they can adopt active lifestyle choices
and proper healthy behavior that would reduce their chances of developing overweight and
obesity concerns. Their focus would be firstly to develop a supportive environment which would
support healthy eating as well as active living of the members and families of the communities
and also introduce state-wide healthy eating as well as active listening support programs. They
also ensured that advices of healthy eating and active living would be provided as the part of the
routine service delivery for the people in the communities (McKosker et al., 2018). They also
described the importance of education and information among the communities for enabling
informed and healthy choices by the individuals and families in the communities.

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A number of enablers as well as barriers had been found which have influenced the
implementation of the policy in the state-level. One of them is the leadership and governance
which actually helped in ensuring effective and appropriate oversight and also for overriding
attention to system designing and accountability. This is quite evident from the fact where
certain pages of the policy had been dedicated to some of the renowned healthcare leaders who
have provided their various insights and beliefs from their experiences about management of the
conditions of the obesity (Thompson et al., 2015). Another important enabler is the workforce
where high quality as patient focused and integrated multidisciplinary teams are seen to work
together to bring put some of the best strategies that would result in best health outcomes of the
patients. The policy makers, professionals of the NSW health ministry as well as healthcare
professionals have come together to form teams that had helped in designing out the best
strategies aligning with the main goals that are set to achieve best healthcare services. The third
enabler is the effective partnership as well as networks which helped in integrating and
coordinating interactions between members of the communities and families and different
governmental and non-governmental organization who contributed in developing supportive
government for the people in the communities (Hardy et al., 2019). It can be well noticed that for
each of the four strategic directions had been set, actions had been proposed and each of the
actions are implemented with the help partnerships of specific stakeholders. These stakeholders
are clearly discussed after each of the action helping to understand the organizations which had
worked together helping in the implementation of the action plan. Another enabler that can be
also found in this stage is the information as well as the research capacity where effective
translation of the research into the policy can be noted along with evidence based approaches and
new medical technologies had been found to support improvements in the care. The policy

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makers had taken considerable efforts in working with the healthcare researchers who had
researched extensively to come up with significant data and details that had helped in developing
and shipping the policy (Boylan et al., 2017). This can be well witnessed from the fact where the
researchers had identified each of the priority groups separately collecting this statistical data
about them and depicting their needs accordingly to live safer and healthy lives. They have
correctly researched and identified the priority groups like that of the aboriginal communities,
regional and remote control communities, culturally and linguistically diverse communities and
even socio-economic disadvantaged communities who have the highest requirements. However,
the only arena that seemed to act as the barrier is the financing as well as the infrastructure
(Mulley & Ho, 2017). The policy did not discuss about the different financial incentives and the
funding arrangements that could have better supported and coordinated the care as well as access
to the services and also for implementation of the state-wide programs. This could have acted as
the barrier resulting in interruption of the smooth flow of the implementation procedure of the
policy.
Part 3:
The registered nursing professionals have to fulfill the roles and the duties of primary
healthcare professionals where they need to ensure providing promotive, preventive,
rehabilitative, curative and also supportive care services for the people and the family members.
The policy had been found to propose establishing supportive environment with programs that
would enable people for active living and healthy eating; nursing professionals need to
strengthen the implementation of the goals set by them by first educating the people and families
in the communities of NSW about obesity and overweight. Development of health literacy and
proper healthcare knowledge is important for people to take proper decisions about the

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healthcare services that they need to take and also adopt proper lifestyle factors and healthy
behaviors to live better quality lives (Hector, Boylan & Ho, 2016). Therefore, nursing
professionals should arrange for health education sessions where they should educate family
members and communities about the impacts of obesity and its risk factors for chronic disorders
to make them aware of the ill outcomes of this health concern. Following this, the healthcare
they should teach families and communities about the strategies that they can adopt for living
obesity free lives like following the tactics mentioned in the policy plan and others. However, an
important aspect needs to be mentioned here. The present day researchers have found that even
health education provided to the community members may not result in bringing out changes in
the health behaviors when the community members lack motivation to adopt the behaviors that
had been advised to them. Therefore, nursing professionals should be working in collaboration
with that of the psychotherapists and the counselors to initiate motivational interviewing or talk
therapies like cognitive behavioral therapies and many others so as to develop motivation among
the people and the families in the communities. Apart from that, nursing professionals would
take the responsibility of arranging screening sessions in the communities as well as in the
schools, universities and well as different working organizations (Spiciarch et al., 2019). They
should be screening people by measuring their basal metabolic index as well as waist
circumference to find out whether they are overweight or obesity or are vulnerable to develop
such conditions or not. Following this, they should provide them with consultation services and
advice them of the strategies that they would need to take for management of their symptoms.
Moreover, the nurses should also report to the judicial system of the government about the
impact of obesogenic environment on health of people in the nation. Excessive marketing and
advertisements of fast foods, take-way foods like chips, fries, burgers, cold-drinks and others

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increase interests of people in purchasing them. Hence, the nurses should advocate this so that
the government can put bans of such marketing and advertisements and also enable the legal
system to impose taxes of calorie dense fast foods, take-way foods. They should work with
government official to make sure of the reduction of the price of organic foods so that all people,
irrespective of their socio-economic status can buy them (Thompson et al., 2015). The nurses
should also work with community leaders and local governments to develop parks, fields,
playgrounds as well as similar such arenas where they can undertake jogging and exercising
activities, brisk walking, cycling and many others. Communities should try to implement many
activity based sessions like swimming sessions, dancing sessions, aerobic exercises sessions,
yoga and mediation sessions ensuring that families can live healthy lives free from obesity and
overweight issues.

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References:
Boylan, S., Hardy, L. L., Drayton, B. A., Grunseit, A., & Mihrshahi, S. (2017). Assessing junk
food consumption among Australian children: trends and associated characteristics from
a cross-sectional study. BMC public health, 17(1), 299.
Hardy, L. L., Jin, K., Mihrshahi, S., & Ding, D. (2019). Trends in overweight, obesity, and
waist-to-height ratio among Australian children from linguistically diverse backgrounds,
1997 to 2015. International Journal of Obesity, 43(1), 116.
Hector, D., Boylan, S., & Lee, A. (2016). Healthy Food Environment Scoping Review.
PANORG-Physical Activity Nutrition and Obesity Research Group.
Innes-Hughes, C., Rissel, C., Thomas, M., Wolfenden, L., Maganja, D., Buckett, K., ... &
McIntyre, E. (2019). Reflections on the NSW Healthy Children Initiative: a
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Pract, 29(1), e2911908.
Kite, J., Hector, D., St George, A., Pedisic, Z., Phongsavan, P., Bauman, A., ... & Bellew, B.
(2015). Comprehensive sector-wide strategies to prevent and control obesity: what are the
potential health and broader societal benefits? A case study from Australia.
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Mulley, C., & Ho, C. (2017). Understanding the Determinants of Walking as the Basis for Social
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Spiciarich, M. C., von Gaudecker, J. R., Jurasek, L., Clarke, D. F., Burneo, J., & Vidaurre, J.
(2019). Global Health and Epilepsy: Update and Future Directions. Current neurology
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Thompson, S. M., Paine, G., & Mitchell, E. (2015, December). Creating environments that
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