Health Promotion and Program Planning for Obesity

Running head: HEALTH PROMOTION AND PROGRAM PLANNING
HEALTH PROMOTION AND PROGRAM PLANNING
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1HEALTH PROMOTION AND PROGRAM PLANNING
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

2HEALTH PROMOTION AND PROGRAM PLANNING
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