The Impact of Childhood Obesity as a Social Trend in the UK: A Report

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CHILDHOOD OBESITY AS A SOCIAL TREND
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Executive Summary
Childhood obesity is the biggest health concern in the UK and it has become a trend in the
society. Obesity basically degrades children’s health and gives rise to other diseases. The UK
government is making continuous efforts to decrease the obesity rate. Some policies regulated
by the government regarding childhood obesity have been discussed. Some of the children who
are suffering from obesity are either predisposed obesity or metabolic rate of disorder which are
obese on both social and biological.
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Demonstrate an understanding of obesity as a current social trend in health and social care and its
impact on individuals.......................................................................................................................3
Demonstrate an understanding of the social policy background relevant to childhood obesity.....4
Demonstrate an understanding of different workers’ roles in addressing childhood obesity..........5
Assess the impact on service users of worker interventions............................................................6
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................8
Reference List..................................................................................................................................9
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Introduction
Childhood obesity is one of the major concerns in the UK. According to the National Health
Service, nearly 60% of children in primary school are severely obese. Childhood obesity has
become a social trend in the UK because of continuous growth. Public Health England is
responsible for overseeing national programmes on childhood obesity. The childhood obesity
rate is continuously increasing and the government plans and policies are unable to decrease the
obesity rate. Obesity degrades children's health and it severely affects their future. Obesity also
decreases children's confidence in the school. Childhood obesity is mainly caused due to
improper diet.
Demonstrate an understanding of obesity as a current social trend in health and social care
and its impact on individuals
Childhood obesity is generally the abnormal accumulation of fat to an extent that it could have a
severe effect on health. Childhood obesity is basically a chronic disorder. According to NHS
data, nearly 28% of children aged between 2-15 years in the UK are estimated to be obese or
overweight. The childhood obesity rate in the UK is continuously increasing and it has become
the biggest concern in the country. According to the NHS, it has been found out that nearly 27%
of the children that are aged between 4 to 5 years in the UK were obese or overweight in the year
2016-2017. Near about 34% of children aged between 10 to 11 years were obese or overweight.
Obesity rate increases when the children start going to school and it has been observed that
nearly one among three children is suffering from obesity.
Obesity in health and social care
Mental health of children is also affected due to overweight as they lose confidence and
motivation to go out and perform any task. It has also been observed that sometimes children go
through isolation phase due to overweight. As suggested Simmonds et al. (2016), the National
Health Service spends nearly 6.1 billion euro per year on obesity and according to NHS
childhood obesity is going to be the reason for 7.6 million cases of diseases by the year 2035.
The health governing bodies are making a continuous effort to decrease the obesity rate in order
to improve health quality in the UK.
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Impact on individuals
Children who are overweight or obese are likely to develop type 2 diabetes as well as liver
problems during the childhood period. Obese and overweight children are more likely to face
low-esteem, lower quality of life and bullying. Without any appropriate health care service,
obese children are likely to become overweight adults. Obese adults are at risk of cancer, liver
and heart disease. Obesity is considered the biggest human generated burden on the economy
after the economy. As stated by Wilkie (2016), the government need to develop strategies to
decrease the obesity rate throughout the country, including quality improvement and vigorous
evaluation plans. A robust evaluation is needed to analyse and monitor the effectiveness of the
projected sugar level as well as other sugar reduction strategies on the high sugar contained
beverages in the UK. The nutrition standard of the school needs to be expanded. The government
needs to focus on banning high sugar and high-calorie food products. The government also needs
to focus on obesity health promotion in order the aware the people about the causes and
consequences of obesity.
Demonstrate an understanding of the social policy background relevant to childhood
obesity
As childhood obesity is the biggest concern in the UK, various bodies are required to decrease
the obesity rate. Obesity is the cause of other serious diseases and it mainly gives rise to diabetes.
The health care bodies of the UK use Body Mass Index to measure obesity. Childhood obesity is
mainly caused due to improper diet and sometimes it is genetic. Children’s often get attracted to
junk food and beverages. Junk food and beverages have high calorie and high sugar level and
these foods are the major cause of excessive weight. Parents are responsible to look after the
children diet (Sanders et al. 2015). The UK government has analysed the impact of obesity and
they are taking important steps to decrease the obesity rate. The government is also forcing the
health care organisation to implement strategies to cure obesity at an early stage. The
government is focusing on food products that can cause weight gain.
Sugar reduction and Calorie reduction
The government is focusing on reducing the sugar and calorie percentage of food products. Most
of the soft drinks and beverages have high content and sugar is a major cause of excessive
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weight. The soft drink companies have to follow the government policies in order to carry out
their products in the market. As commented by Lobstein and McPherson (2016), children often
get attracted to soft drinks and beverages. Parents have to look after their children's diet. Parents
can guide their children to avoid fast foods and soft drinks in order to maintain their health. Junk
food mainly contains high calorie and on an average obese and overweight children are
consuming nearly 500 extra calories per day. High-calorie intake cause excessive weight gain
that’s the reason why the government is focusing on reducing the calories from all type of foods
(Hendricks et al. 2017). A calorie reduction programme has been started in the year 2017 to
control the obesity rate.
Advertising and Promotion
The government is focusing on educating people about the causes and consequences of obesity.
The UK government is forcing the non-profitable clinics and health care organisations to spread
obesity awareness in the localities (Knai et al. 2016). The UK government is also focusing on
encouraging the children’s for good food consumption as well as banning food and drinks
advertisement. The UK government implemented some policies regarding the food
advertisement is the year 2017 and this policy involved banning the advertising of HFSS drink
and food products mainly in the children media (Ells et al. 2015). The local clinic can help
people to develop a diet plan for their family and children have in order to avoid obesity.
Demonstrate an understanding of different workers’ roles in addressing childhood obesity
Roles in addressing childhood obesity
Childhood obesity has been increasing in a rapid manner in UK in which different workers has
major role for providing healthcare that face daunting challenges for prevention of obesity. As
per Bell et al. (2018), childhood obesity has increased due to complex interaction between the
environment and child in the global context. The prevention and care plan along with treatment
of emerging premorbids that are mainly formulated by a general multidisciplinary teams for
promoting a healthy and better lifestyle. Moreover, the multigenerational medical has been
introduced with comprehensive physical as well as psychological health assessment. Healing
relationship that is provided between providers and patients with profound effect for encouraging
some modification in radical lifestyle; According to Vinck et al. (2016), it can only be motivated
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by empowering children with context of their family and community in which they live their
healthy lifestyle.
Role of parents
Parents play an important role in addressing childhood obesity by implementing certain
strategies to their children. Based on the viewpoint of Miqueleiz et al. (2016), parents are
required to take care of their child by providing them healthy food and keeping a safe distance
from fast food as well as non healthy foods. A healthy diet is recommended for the children who
would metaphorically decrease the toxic environment of the overweight child or obese child.
Healthcare providers have faced several challenges and important task for preventing childhood
obesity. Inspired from Mahmood and Lowe (2017), prevention of obesity requires some
understanding which are directly associated with understanding of genetic evolution that are
vulnerable in nature along with rapid social as well as environmental changes that has changed
over past 50 years.
Other roles
Obtaining of genetic information along with medical history have a general tendency for utilising
the foods in a more efficient way by which the population would be benefited from counselling
of health conditions. Sanders et al. (2015) have mentioned that the obesity with ethnic group
would be able to survive on the land on which they live that does not produce enough food for
along with other survival techniques. The diseases that are related to obesity are increasing with
increase in year as it points out the history of the family. Treating obese children by clinical are
required to obtain family history for better identification of risk ethnicities. A strong and positive
family who are suffering from obesity are required to be concerned for their children that help in
rapid development of health. Obese and overweight children are more likely to face low-esteem,
lower quality of life and bullying along with risk of cancer and other cardiac diseases.
Assess the impact on service users of worker interventions
Impact on service users of childhood obesity that are required to be understood in which health
insurance of large employers have claims their total cost that has incurred. Shackleton et al.
(2016) have opined that it can be clearly seen that the social trend of childhood obesity has put
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impact to the employers along with impact of obese children on working parents. The lack of
data has been included with their numerous data that quantifies their direct cost along with is
productivity and child health such as lactation, prenatal care and other issues. Worker
intervention has four areas of employer impact that emerges their relationships along with direct
payment for healthcare (Mahmood and Lowe, 2017). Parent behaviour plays an import role in
assessing of child health which is directly associated with behaviour with the child. It also
consists of performance of parents along with health care cost that helps in enhancing future
workforce.
Healthcare cost of childhood obesity
Children and adolescent cover health insurance that approximately consist of part of total
population; The overall cost of children in health and social care for limited visibility and
claiming their benefits that has experienced for managing leaders and corporate people.
According to Vinck et al. (2016), the tripling of obesity in children are associated with
healthcare cost the difference of claiming average claims includes cost between adults and obese
children that reflects a greater incidence along with co morbidities and complication. Worker
intervention reflects the under diagnosis that creates a greater stability of average cost among
adults that consist of large size of population.
Lost productivity from childhood obesity
Few data that are available are quantifiable to the impact of the data in which childhood obesity
are depends on absenteeism and presentism. Inspired from Miqueleiz et al. (2016), the adverse
impact of service users that derives from the evidence on the overall productivity on effective
parental needs and care giving; the obesity related illness has an adverse psychological effect that
lead to increase in care giving and parental control of conflicts along with impair activity.
Childhood obesity is mainly caused due to improper diet and sometimes it is genetic as
children’s often get attracted to junk food and beverages. As per Bell et al. (2018), parental loss
time that are associated with child illness are mainly underestimated for due to work schedules
along with report of absence from personal illness. The government of UK has recently analysed
that impact of obesity are associated with taking important steps for decreasing the overall
obesity rate.
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Conclusion
From the above study, it can be concluded that childhood obesity as a social trend has increased
because of continuous growth. Public Health England is mainly responsible observing the
national programs that are totally based on childhood obesity. Obesity and social trend includes
collection of abnormal accumulation of fat within the body of children that puts severe effect on
health. The childhood obesity rate in the UK is continuously increasing and it has become the
biggest concern in the country. Obesity also affects mental health that affected due to their
normal course of action. Multidisciplinary teams for promoting a healthy and better lifestyle
helps in prevention of diseases.
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Reference List
Bell, L.K., Perry, R.A. and Prichard, I., (2018). Exploring Grandparents' Roles in Young
Children's Lifestyle Behaviors and the Prevention of Childhood Obesity: An Australian
Perspective. Journal of nutrition education and behavior, 50(5), pp.516-521.
Ells, L.J., Hancock, C., Copley, V.R., Mead, E., Dinsdale, H., Kinra, S., Viner, R.M. and Rutter,
H., (2015). Prevalence of severe childhood obesity in England: 2006–2013. Archives of disease
in childhood, 100(7), pp.631-636.
Hendricks, A.E., Bochukova, E.G., Marenne, G., Keogh, J.M., Atanassova, N., Bounds, R.,
Wheeler, E., Mistry, V., Henning, E., Körner, A. and Muddyman, D., (2017). Rare variant
analysis of human and rodent obesity genes in individuals with severe childhood obesity.
Scientific reports, 7(1), p.4394.
Knai, C., Petticrew, M. and Mays, N., (2016). The childhood obesity strategy.
Lobstein, T. and McPherson, K., (2016). Nothing new in UK's strategy on childhood obesity.
The Lancet, 388(10047), pp.853-854.
Mahmood, H. and Lowe, S., (2017). Population segmentation: an approach to reducing
childhood obesity inequalities. Perspectives in public health, 137(3), pp.190-195.
Miqueleiz, E., Lostao, L. and Regidor, E., (2016). Stabilisation of the trend in prevalence of
childhood overweight and obesity in Spain: 2001–11. The European Journal of Public
Health, 26(6), pp.960-963.
Sanders, R.H., Han, A., Baker, J.S. and Cobley, S., (2015). Childhood obesity and its physical
and psychological co-morbidities: a systematic review of Australian children and adolescents.
European journal of pediatrics, 174(6), pp.715-746.
Sanders, R.H., Han, A., Baker, J.S. and Cobley, S., (2015). Childhood obesity and its physical
and psychological co-morbidities: a systematic review of Australian children and
adolescents. European journal of pediatrics, 174(6), pp.715-746.
Shackleton, N., Hale, D. and Viner, R.M., (2016). Trends and socioeconomic disparities in
preadolescent's health in the UK: evidence from two birth cohorts 32 years apart. J Epidemiol
Community Health, 70(2), pp.140-146.
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Simmonds, M., Llewellyn, A., Owen, C.G. and Woolacott, N., (2016). Predicting adult obesity
from childhood obesity: a systematic review and meta‐analysis. Obesity reviews, 17(2), pp.95-
107.
Vinck, J., Brohet, C., Roillet, M., Dramaix, M., Borys, J.M., Beysens, J., Jacobs, N., Jebb, S., De
Laet, C. and Neve, J., (2016). Downward trends in the prevalence of childhood overweight in
two pilot towns taking part in the VIASANO community‐based programme in B elgium: data
from a national school health monitoring system. Pediatric obesity, 11(1), pp.61-67.
Wilkie, H.J., Standage, M., Gillison, F.B., Cumming, S.P. and Katzmarzyk, P.T., (2016).
Multiple lifestyle behaviours and overweight and obesity among children aged 9–11 years:
results from the UK site of the International Study of Childhood Obesity, Lifestyle and the
Environment. BMJ open, 6(2), p.e010677.
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