Role of Nurses in Health Promotion for Obesity Patients

Running head: PRIMARY HEALTH CARE
Primary health care
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1PRIMARY HEALTH CARE
Health promotion is the process of improving health by enabling an individual’s control
over the health (World Health Organization, 1986). The focus of the essay is obesity. Since
1975, obesity rate is tripled. Obesity is the burning problem across the world. In 2016, more than
1.9 billion adults were found overweight and all were 18 years and older. Among them 650
million were found obese. In the same year, 41million children were obese or overweight and
they were under age of 5 (World Health Organization, 2018). Australian Health Survey in 2011-
2012 revealed that 63.4% of Australian adults are overweight or obese and 28.3% are to be obese
(AIHW, 2018). Obesity kills more people than underweight and yet it is the preventable disease.
It is caused by sedentary lifestyle, low physical activity, and eating fast food (high calorie and fat
rich food) that increases weight of the individuals. It leads to several health complications such
as diabetes, hypertension making health quality of life poor (Bombak, 2014). Therefore, the aim
of the essay is to disease the role of the nurse or midwife in health promotion for obesity
patients. It will disused in respect to the five major strategies for health promotion identified in
the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (World Health Organization, 1986).
Nursing services use the Ottawa Charter as a framework for health promotion and is
considered an innovation and a quality improvement exercise (Potvin & Jones, 2011). According
to Ottawa charter for health promotion the first strategy is to build healthy public policy. There is
the dire need of such policy in Australia and in many other countries to manage and prevent
obesity. The role of the nurse is to incorporate health in public policy decisions. The nurses may
participate in the intersectoral collaboration by visiting villages like Kulumburu where people are
lacking awareness and support for healthy behaviour. Nurses can play crucial role in document
analysis, conducting workshops and in role playing games with local stakeholders or
interviewing the experts. The nurse can emphasise on active living of obese people and quit

2PRIMARY HEALTH CARE
sedentary lifestyle. The nurses can encourage the transdisciplinary dialogue between the
planning processes to help promote health (www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au, 2018). There are
inadequate studies addressing the complications of obesity and economical harm of the obesity.
The nurse must contribute to healthy policy to use as a future tool for change. For this purpose
the nurse must perform intense assessment. They must participate in the planning of political,
socio-cultural and economical factors contributing to obesity (Hearn et al., 2017). The nurse may
then identify the policy makers in the respective regions by disseminating formation to formulate
proposal and introduce in committee. Policy can be adopted based on evidence from experience
for instance the legislation on ban on the selling of junk food in school premises. To promote the
program the nurses can use evidence based strategies like education of clinicians through
workshops and seminars, incorporation of guidelines into quality assurance projects for obesity
management, allow public to express their opinions through public hearings. Then policy can
then be implemented by government support thorough effective communication strategies,
community programs, health care and training (Meyer et al., 2016; McMurray & Clendon, 2015).
The second strategy of the Ottawa Charter is to create supportive environments
(McMurray & Clendon, 2015). The role of the nurses is to encourage all the people to recognise
the healthy behaviour by conserving and capitalising the resources needed for good health. The
nurse may assist the community people and those visiting hospitals to develop infrastructure to
support physical activity. The nurses can collaborate with other health care professionals and
Non-governmental organisations to develop centres for gym, aerobics, swimming or yoga for
free for those with low socioeconomic status (Mama, et al., 2015). The nurse or midwifes must
collaborate with the social workers to address the patients economic determinants. The midwife
may help the patient preserve the resources by wise economic choices. The nurses and midwifes