Obesity and Public Health Issues: Role of Environmental Health Officers in Melbourne

Obesity and increasing rate of being overweight among the people from all over the
world is an ongoing health crisis. Various public health issues are associated with it as well.
A worldwide debate is going on regarding the reason behind such health crisis and individual
life-style choices and other social factors are making obesity a concern for the whole society.
Apart from these, people are experiencing many health issues due to environmental and
social hazards. In this regard, the role of Environmental Health Officers is highly significant
in the city of Melbourne. Recommendations from other stakeholders are also important. Here,
in this paper I am going to reflect how this learning relates and extends my skills and
knowledge. At the same time, I will also how it will help in future in order to meet relevant
competency standard in future practice.
According to World Health Organization (WHO), obesity is one of the chronic
diseases and it is prevalent in both developed as well as developing countries (Brennan-Olsen
et al., 2018). It is generally caused when the energy intake is quite higher than the amount of
energy used by the body. In certain population, the prevalence of obesity might be high when
compared to other populations due to biological, environmental, and cultural factors. As per
the statistics on obesity, the prevalence of obesity among adults is increasing and the learning
from the content also extends the knowledge regarding the prevalence statistics of obesity
among children and adults. Various determinants are there that leads to the occurrence of
obesity and that include genetic factors, social factors, environmental factors, lifestyle
preferences, and others (Watts et al., 2015). The learning enhanced my skill about the ways
of preventing obesity among people and in order to prevent obesity, physical activity and
dietary management is most effective (Bauman et al., 2012). The content also discusses about
the interventions to prevent obesity. I learned the effective invention strategies that can be
helpful in preventing obesity from the early childhood and schools can be involved in these
intervention approaches (Rani & Sathiyasekaran, 2013). Apart from this, the content assisted

to have a deep insight in the key health determinants. Genetics, body structure as well as
function. The health determinants are responsible for the difference in health status among
the people from the same ecology. Initially I had idea about the difference in health status but
the actual reason behind such dissimilarity was not clearly known to me and learning from
this content I learned that social determinants like poverty or lack of education can impact the
health and living standard of people. However, reducing the cost of education and increasing
opportunity for sufficient employment can be helpful in reducing the inconveniences from
such determinants. Even, the learning helped me to think from deep and I came to know that
people living in over-crowded environment, where the environment is highly congested are
more likely to suffer from several health issues than others. The content clearly discussed the
health issues associated with over-crowding and poor development of houses where it is
impossible to get fresh air from the environment (Giles-Corti et al., 2016). The substandard
housing development and poor ventilation status of houses can cause various serious health
issues among the people. Through the learning from this content I enhanced my knowledge
about the diseases caused by excessive air pollution and among them, the most common
disease occur due to respiratory issues (Chen, Wan, Yang & Zou, 2015). Depending upon
the dose of the contaminants, the health impacts caused on human being are either for long
term or for short term. Also, air pollution can cause cardiovascular dysfunction as well as
neuropsychiatric complications among the human beings which were unknown to me
(Guillory, Clayton, Herndon & Finnerty, 2016). Learning from this content also helped me to
know that cold in indoor conditions might cause severe health issues as too cold as well as
too hot temperatures always contribute to the occurrence of many adverse effects on the
human health. Also, poor ventilation can allow pests to stay inside the houses which may
cause various health issues. Therefore, this learning opened my eyes in various prospects of
health hazards and its determinants.