Healthcare Policy Concern: Prevalence of Obesity among Young Children and Young Adults

Running head: HEALTHCARE POLICY CONCERN
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Healthcare Policy Concern
Student’s Name
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Healthcare Policy Concern: Prevalence of Obesity among Young Children and Young Adults
Healthcare policy encompasses creating and implementing of regulations, rules, and laws
for the management of the healthcare system of the nation. It involves guidelines aimed at
achieving healthcare goals in society. There are existing implications for healthcare policies
which include improvement of people's quality of life and influence of positive change.
Advocacy's role is to unify as well as support the nursing occupation and also revolutionize
healthcare. Advocacy's impact on healthcare policy is that it offers knowledge on the intended
recipient for particular strategies as well as the measurable results after the implementation of the
system. An Advanced Practice Nurse's responsibility includes advocacy since a professional's
role is to offer quality care assurance through the influence of practice standards by the use of the
policy (Stadhouders et al., 2018). Being a leader, they should encourage as well as embrace
reforms to help in addressing challenges and benefits for any possible system. This paper focuses
on an opioid crisis healthcare concern in Missouri, offer a solution to the healthcare concern,
identified official, and a summary.
Prevalence of Obesity among Young People
In the modern-day, there has been an increase in disorders resulting from improper diets
and nutrition and lack of exercise, which is severely affecting young people all over the world.
One of the most prevalent disorders associated with lack of proper diets and exercise among
young people is Obesity. Prevailing severe Obesity among children as well as young adults has
increased in the past few years, leading to heightened concern and awareness regarding the
metabolic and cardiovascular health of people in the group. In the United States, between 1999
and 2004, 4% of young adults and children between 2-9 years were classified to have severe
Obesity (Ehehalt et al., 2017). Also, recently, between 2011 and 2012, severe Obesity prevailed

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to about 6% in the same age group. Cardiometabolic risk factors are high in children with
Obesity as compared to those who have a healthy weight. Using only one category for Obesity
fails to take varying obesity severity into account. The American Heart Association pointed out
several studies showing more obesity forms that are more severe which were associated with a
higher immediate risk of complications which is weight-related such as blood glucose levels,
abnormal lipid, and increase in blood pressure levels. Severe Obesity is clearly defined to be
120% of 95th percentile of the BMI while markedly severe Obesity is 140% of 95th percentile.
With children approaching adulthood, the percentile curves to 35 BMI for severe Obesity and 40
for markedly severe Obesity (Lifshitz et al., 2016).
Solving the Obesity Crisis among Children and Teenagers
Coming up with an all-inclusive program, and implementing it in elementary, middle,
and high schools is the first step towards successfully mitigating the increasing cases of obesity
among children and young adults. The Initiative could focus on educating children as well as
their families on the importance of exercise, nutrition, and diet. The knowledge will ultimately
yield positive results. The United State is greatly affected by the increasing rate of obesity cases
among younger people. Offering an initiative to educate children on the importance of proper
dieting and exercise will thus help in reducing the risk of Obesity as well as diabetes in children.
The Initiative will ascertain that every school receives a complete syllabus on nutrition as it is
applicable to daily life, thus molding healthy children (Messmer et al., 2016). In addition, the
Initiative will also include treatment knowledge, as there are children who already have diabetes
and obesity disorders. The program needs to be designed in a way that it is accessible to not only
the students but also to the teachers and parents of the children.