Community Health Nursing Project: Obesity Prevention Campaign, NC

This project outlines a community health nursing diagnosis and social media campaign aimed at preventing obesity among children under 18 in North Carolina. The project identifies obesity as a significant health concern linked to unhealthy eating habits, lack of physical activity, and genetic factors, and it proposes a social media campaign utilizing Facebook and YouTube to disseminate health messages. The campaign's objective is to reduce childhood obesity by 50%, with strategies including informative posts, engaging videos, and stakeholder partnerships with local schools, gyms, and health facilities. The project details campaign implementation, evaluation methods, and cost considerations, emphasizing the importance of community resources, evidence-based practices, and collaboration to promote healthy lifestyles and address the public health challenge of childhood obesity. The campaign's goal is to provide health education and promote healthier lifestyles, with an emphasis on community engagement and the use of social media platforms to reach the target population.

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Prevention of Obesity
By
Student Name
Course Name
Institute Name
Date
Community Health Nursing Diagnosis

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Obesity can be defined as a medical condition or a disorder characterized by the
accumulation of excessive body fats. My community health nursing diagnosis will focus on
prevention of obesity among children below the age of 18years within my state North Carolina,
Charlotte. The population at North Carolina state is estimated to be around 10.5 million people
compared to 2009 population of 9.5million people within a size of 139,390 Km square. Majority
of people within this state experience health challenges such as unhealthy weight, heart diseases,
and diabetes. The three challenges are associated with increased body fats accumulation which
leads to obesity. Children become susceptible to obesity due to a combination of factors such as
unhealthy eating patterns, lack of physical activities or genetic factors.
How Obesity Is Linked To Health Inequality
Increased weight or obese among children in the United State is becoming a major health
concern. The risk of obesity or overweight among children is likely to be transformed into
adolescents or adult overweight or obesity making them susceptible to chronic conditions such as
diabetes or heart diseases later in life. Obese children may also be associated with health
conditions such as low self-esteem, sadness, and stress. Apart from genetic obesity, parents also
contribute to overweight to their children by not limiting the types of foods their children take
while at home. They don´t make nutrition choices for their children and advise them
appropriately on need of physical activities which is essential in burning excessive fats.
Healthcare providers may also be blamed for not providing nutrition advice to community
members when they visit healthcare centers and lack of public or school campaigns on healthy
diets with a primary focus of preventing overweight that leads to obesity (Frederick, Snellman &
Putnam, 2014).
Primary Community Resources For Prevention Of Obesity Among Children

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Primary prevention of obesity in the community can include interventions such as
successful weight loss and maintenance programs. Other interventions such as increasing
physical activity and improving eating habits may also help to control overweight issues that
result in obesity. Community resources such as open play grounds for children and diet control
programs which aims at utilizing whole grains, vegetables and fruits found within the community
can help in management of weight issues (Dawes, 2014).
Bicycling and walking to school should also be encouraged to keep children physically fit
and healthy. Communities should design places where children can play safely, travel by other
self-propelled means including activities that need active participation of children to help in
burning excessive fats from the body. Food control programs can also be promoted within
families and schools to ensure only healthy foods are provided to children to avoid issues of
overweight due to consumption of unhealthy food (Cunningham, Kramer & Narayan, 2014).
According to my community analysis and assessment, I found valuable resources which
can help to prevent childhood obesity. These resources include parks, gyms and grocery stores.
Grocery stores provide fruit market and fresh vegetables including private shops which offer
optional foods both unhealthy and healthy. The community also has local growers who provide
farmers market with other products affordable for low income people. There are also other
organizations within the community which provide support on children healthcare which include
education on health conditions such as childhood obesity. The organizations also provide
education programs for families within the community to enable them to have right knowledge
on the right foods which are healthy for their children. Finally the community has healthcare
department which provide health education about nutrition to mothers of chilren under five
years, infants, breastfeeding and pregnant women. Healthcare facility also provide screening and

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vaccination services to the community including other public health services.
Causes Of Obesity Among Children
The most causes of obesity among children is unhealthy eating patterns, lack of physical
activities, genetic factors or a combination of these factors.
Evidence-Based Practice
Obesity in children is becoming a major public health concern since it can be transmitted
from childhood to adolescents and later on adulthood leading to the development of
cardiovascular diseases such as high blood pressure, diabetes and heart diseases during
adulthood. According to the National Survey of Children´s Health conducted between 2016 and
2017, the prevalence of obesity among children was 17.2%. An epidemic of obesity has affected
both adolescents and children across developing and developed world in recent years. The issue
of obesity has overtaken prevalence of underweight in many developing countries including
USA. according to studies conducted on obesity prevalence, treatment of obesity condition
among children mismatched between the scale of the problem and weak strategies for dealing
with it.(Kaur, Lamb & Ogden, 2015).
Childhood obesity is becoming a major public health concern bringing the challenge from
both regulatory and legislative proposals at local level, state and at the national level. There has
been a slow research which consequently resulted into slow scope and urgency of the crisis
amounting to 17% of youths being clinically obese. To make a meaningful approach, a
comprehensive evidence based policy approach is required. According to researchers, policy
making approach has not been frequently utilized or supported by research evidence which has
led to political expediency during policy decision making, values, anecdotes and consitituent
concerns. There is also little information available to indicate how research evidence compared

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to non research evidence is utilized in policy making to ensure successful prevention of
childhood obesity (Li et al., 2013)..
Social Media Campaign Objective
The use of social media in the prevention of childhood obesity is aimed at reducing
childhood obesity by 50% and more (Williams, 2013).
Social Marketing Interventions
Appropriate social media platform for communicating health messages will be youtube
and facebook. The purpose of using this platform is because it will be easier to design and send
health messages to reach the target people from anywhere and anytime. Appropriate nutrition
diet and physical exercises messages can be developed and shared to target population through
facebook and youtube (Raine et al., 2013).
Social Media Platform
There are various reasons why facebook and youtube will be used as appropriate social
media platforms. First many people across the world are connected to faceboook internet and
youtube which makes it appropriate to send health messages to parents of the target childrens.
Youtube can also be implemented to send health messages through the use of youtube ad. This is
because majority of parents allow their parents to watch video on youtube hence the use of
youtube ads will be appropriate to send educational messages directly to both children and
parents.
Benefits of Using Social Media Platform
The use of facebook and youtube for promoting health messages is very effective since
the two social media platforms are easily accessible. It is also easy to update and adjust health

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messages according to responses and feedback received from the target population. The use of
youtube is very effective in promoting health on obesity control since videos can be customized
to show how physical exercises should be done to burn excess fats. (Gollust, Niederdeppe &
Barry, 2013).
Benefits to target population
My target population will benefit from highly developed health messages and videos
which will be shared through youtube and facebook. The use of facebook will help in directing
parents to allow their children who are my target population to the youtube channel where they
will get highly customized content on healthy nutrition and physical activities. It will also be
easy to access my content through facebook and youtube hence messages can be customized
according to my target population need.
Practices For Implementing Social Media
The best practice for this campaign strategy will include; ensuring relevant information
and videos posted to the social media platforms, creating interesting posts, making clear message
that can be easily understood and being honest to my target audience. According to Center for
Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) messages posted on social media platform should be
simple and clear. There should also be a web link where the messages can be posted frequently
using the right customized images. CDC also recommends cross promotion when addressing
health issues using social media platforms. This involves requesting your audience to help in
advertising your health messages to their social media platforms such as their facebook pages or
twitter accounts. This approach can be achieved through the use of tag requests or liking the page
which helps to make the platform popular hence reaching a wider audience (CDC, 2011).
Stakeholders Role, Responsibility, And Partnership

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As a lead nurse, I will be in charge of this social media platform as a major stakeholders.
Other interested people to be part of this program will be welcomed to help in generating content
and advising on how to make an attractive marketing platform. My role will also include
ensuring healthy argument and right content being posted on the facebook page. I will be
responsible in answering any questions or concerns from our viewers on time which I hope it
will create a good environment for our target population leading to growth of our page.
Local schools and health facilities will also be considered as major stakeholders in this
program. Local schools will play a major role in providing health messages directly to my target
population. Local hospitals will be responsible in handling health conditions and other
complications of childhood obesity noted during the campaign period. A good partnership
between local school and local hospitals will help in delivering the message directly to target
population as well as addressing other health issues related to childhood ebesity.
Potential Public and Private Partnership
Potential interested persons and organizations in preventing childhood obesity will be
encouraged to join my program. The most targeted partners for this program will be local
schools, gym centers, personal trainers and dieticians. Other social media platforms can also be
incorporated as long as they can deliver health messages to my target population (Dietz et al.,
2015).
Specific Timeline for Implementation
Community mobilization will be done to identify useful resources and personnel to
include in our campaign strategy. Community participation will then be conducted to check on
community knowledge about prevention of obesity. Finally, I will conduct a survey to determine
if facebook and youtube is widely used among my target population before I start the campaign.

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The survey process is expected to take 45 days. Implementation of the program can be done 2
weeks after analyzing findings from the survey.
Evaluation Of The Campaign
Evaluation of social media campaign will be done through assessments on achievement
of objectives and surveys. This will be achieved through regular observation of comments of my
viewers and the number of views to the content posted. There will also be review of comments
posted and adjusting the program content according to our viewers desire and advise (Backholer
et al., 2014).
Cost of implementing campaign
The cost of this campaign is very affordable since it is free to create facebook page. For
youtube ads, it will cost me little cash but I am hoping stakeholders will be willing to help in
investing in youtube marketing. The other cost that can be incurred is buying resources to use in
creation of videos which that attractive and fun. This may include buying high resolution
cameras which will allow development of quality content. I expect members within the target
community will be willing to be part of the video hence reducing the cost of hiring.
Reflection
Community health nurse efforts to promote healthier population requires the use of
different approaches and strategies to pass health messages to people with aim of changing
people´s behavior and improving their health. The use of social media campaigns has been the
most desired platforms for preventing health conditions especially chronic conditions or during
outbreaks. Social media campaign (facebook and youtube) in promoting health is convenient
because it reaches many people at a time and the message can be modified according to the need

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(Bleich, Wu, Wilson & Wang, 2013).
Conclusion
Community health nurses should promote a healthy lifestyle among children to prevent
the issue of obesity. Proper interventions and strategies such as social media campaigns
(facebook and youtube) should be promoted to communicate to children´s peers about the
importance of healthy eating and regular physical activities. This can help to prevent health
conditions such as chronic diseases which develop from childhood life to adulthood.

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References
Backholer, K., Beauchamp, A., Ball, K., Turrell, G., Martin, J., Woods, J., & Peeters, A. (2014).
A framework for evaluating the impact of obesity prevention strategies on socioeconomic
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Bleich, S. N., Segal, J., Wu, Y., Wilson, R., & Wang, Y. (2013). Systematic review of
community-based childhood obesity prevention studies. Pediatrics, 132(1), e201-e210.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC. (2011). CDC grand rounds: childhood obesity
in the United States. MMWR. Morbidity and mortality weekly report, 60(2), 42.
Cunningham, S. A., Kramer, M. R., & Narayan, K. V. (2014). Incidence of childhood obesity in
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Dawes, L. (2014). Childhood obesity in America. Harvard University Press.
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