Health Promotion and Program Planning for Obesity

This article discusses the problems related to health and quality of life due to obesity, behavioral factors influencing the health problem, predisposing, enabling and reinforcing factors of the identified health behavior, impact of policies, resources and circumstances on interventions and data sources for health promotion and program planning for obesity.

Running head: HEALTH PROMOTION AND PROGRAM PLANNING
HEALTH PROMOTION AND PROGRAM PLANNING
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1. Problems related to health and quality of life:
Health promotion is a process in which effective strategies are taken in order to enable
the people to enhance control over various health issues and improve their health condition and
maintain well-being. (Eldredge et al., 2016). In United States it has been found that modern life
has led to the increase in the various health issues due to unhealthy diet, lack of physical
activities, substance abuse and other unhealthy behaviors as well. Majority of the population has
been found to suffer from different health issues including mild health problem to acute or
chronic disease (Moncayo & Silveira, 2017). Statistics have reported that approximately 99
million people in United States are suffering from high cholesterol, 20% people have been found
to suffer from gastrointestinal problem, approx. 25 million patients have been found with asthma
and 7 million people have been found to suffer from COPD (who.int, 2018). In addition the
national diabetes statistics report has revealed that the numbers of people suffering from type 1
and type 2 diabetes have been increased from 29.1 million to 25.8 million in two years (cdc.gov,
2018). Furthermore, other respiratory disease, cardiovascular issues, mental health issues and
cancer is also common in the population (Moncayo & Silveira, 2017). Study has indicated that
the main factor that has led to the consequence of such diseases is obesity. 1 out of 3 adults in
United States has been found to suffer from obesity (Ng et al., 2014). Such increase rate of
obesity has affected the quality of life in the population. Thus, obesity has been identified as the
major health problem especially for older adults in United States.
2. Behavioral factors influencing the health problem:
Obesity has been chosen as the major health issue in United States for this project. In this
regards it has been found that there are various behavioral factors that contribute to the
consequence of obesity in an effective manner. Unhealthy eating habit is one of the main factors

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that leads to the condition of overweight. In the recent days people are more addicted to
unhealthy and high caloric foods such as burger, pizza, fast foods and others. In addition intake
of high caloric sugar beverages has also increased (Sharma & Fulton, 2013). On the other hand,
with increasing intake of high caloric food the rate physical activities has decreased significantly.
People have adapted the luxury lifestyle and started to use modern technologies to ease their life
which has reduced the rate of their daily physical activity and has influenced obesity (Strasser,
2013). In addition, smoking has been found as the risk factor of obesity. Study has indicated that
smoking affects the fat distribution of the body and could act as the risk factor of obesity (Dare,
Mackay & Pell, 2015). Furthermore, behavior such as excessive alcohol intake is also associated
with obesity as alcohol is a high caloric drink (Boyle et al., 2014). Among such behaviors the
most amenable behavior to intervention is food intake or diet of the people. Introducing
interventions to control the food intake by providing the knowledge regarding healthy diet and
nutrition would help to create awareness and could help to induce healthy eating habit to control
other health issues as well (Sharma & Fulton, 2013).
In addition there are some environmental factors as well that influence obesity. Food
advertising and availability of unhealthy food and beverages at reasonable price are some
potential factors that influence people to intake such unhealthy foods. On the other hand, lack of
physical activity and nutritious food are considered as risk factors of obesity and people with low
socioeconomic condition are more prone to such risk factors (Bhurosy & Jeewon, 2014).
Education is another potential factor. Due to lack of education people lack adequate knowledge
about proper diet, nutrition, obesity and health issues associated with it, thus, they fail to take
effective measures to control obesity (Cawley, Frisvold & Meyerhoefer, 2013). Hence, it is

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important to introduce interventions to address such environmental factors to reduce the
prevalence of obesity.
3. Predisposing, enabling and reinforcing factors of the identified health behavior:
Predisposing factors- Predisposing factors are defined as the factors that influence a person to
develop a behavior. There are various predisposing factors that influence the behaviors that could
lead to the consequence of obesity. For example, genetics is one of such predisposing factors.
The genetic influence could lead to some behavior associated with obesity such as, smoking,
alcohol intake and excessive food intake as well. In addition, obesity could be occurred due to
genetic factors. On the other hand, life events such as death of loved one, family conflict,
financial crisis and others are considered as predisposing factor that could lead to excessive
smoking and alcohol intake (Xia & Grant, 2013).
Enabling factors- Enabling factors refer to forces that facilitate or hinder the changes in
behavior according to the availability. Such factors include resources, accessibility or
availability. In case of behavior that induces obesity the enabling factors may include the
availability of the unhealthy foods at reasonable price. On the other hand availability of tobacco
or alcohol is also high that could act as the enabling factor. Such increase in the availability or
accessibility of resources has contributed effectively to the increase in unhealthy behavior that
could lead to obesity (Boyle et al., 2014).
Reinforcing factors- Reinforcing factors include the factors that reinforce or reward the
behaviors such as social or economic factors. In case of obesity, poor socioeconomic status of
people, education, increasing advertisement on food and beverages could be considered as the
social factors that influence the behaviors such as lack of nutritious food, substance abuse, lack

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of physical activity and unhealthy diet that increase the risk of obesity in an effective manner
(Bhurosy & Jeewon, 2014).
4. Impact of policies, resources and circumstances on interventions:
Various interventions such as individual level interventions and social or environmental
interventions have been taken in order to address the risk factors of obesity and reduce the
prevalence in the population. In this regards different policies in the state level and by local
governments have been introduced such as Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity
(yaleruddcenter.org, 2018). Organizations such as state policies to prevent obesity: Better
policies for a healthier America have been introduced to provide effective strategies to control
obesity in the population (stateofobesity.org, 2018). Adequate resources also play an important
role to facilitate the interventions such as ground for physical activity, different program to
screen the health issues and education program to help people learn about obesity and
management process (Hawkes et al., 2015). However, there are some circumstances that could
hinder the interventions. For example, it is not possible to restrict people to eat the food of their
choice and the food and beverage industry could not be eliminated as it contributes to the GDP
of the country. Such situation could reduce the effectiveness of the interventions (Roberto et al.,
2015). Thus, individual; level awareness is important to control obesity and live healthy life.
5. Data sources:
In order to address the previous question effective and relevant secondary data such as
book, journal articles from last five years have been used. Data bases such as Google Scholar and
PubMed have been used to find out the relevant sources. In case of preparing a project in real life
adequate data sources such as primary data and secondary data will be required. For primary data

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survey or interview of the nurses, general practitioners and patients with obesity will be
conducted. For secondary data relevant data previous literatures from book, article will be
gathered and important government websites and hospital records will be checked to gather
required assessment data (Goodman, Cryder & Cheema, 2013).

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References:
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problem with diet, physical activity, or socioeconomic status?. The Scientific World
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Boyle, T., Fritschi, L., Tabatabaei, S. M., Ringwald, K., & Heyworth, J. S. (2014). Smoking,
alcohol, diabetes, obesity, socioeconomic status, and the risk of colorectal cancer in a
population-based case–control study. Cancer Causes & Control, 25(12), 1659-1668.
Cawley, J., Frisvold, D., & Meyerhoefer, C. (2013). The impact of physical education on obesity
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cdc.gov (2018). National Diabetes Statistics Report | Data & Statistics | Diabetes | CDC.
Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/data/statistics/statistics-report.html
Dare, S., Mackay, D. F., & Pell, J. P. (2015). Relationship between smoking and obesity: a cross-
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Moncayo, Á., & Silveira, A. C. (2017). Current epidemiological trends of Chagas disease in
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yaleruddcenter.org (2018). Home - UConn Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. Retrieved
from http://www.yaleruddcenter.org/legislation/