Health Promotion and Nurses' Role in Obesity: Dandenong Essay

This essay examines the application of the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion in addressing obesity within the Dandenong community of Melbourne, Australia. It focuses on the role of nurses in implementing health promotion strategies, specifically targeting females aged 25 to 44. The essay e...Read More

Running head: OBESITY 1
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Student’s Name
Professor’s Name
Institution of Affiliation
Date

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Introduction
Obesity refers to a medical condition in which an individual is overweight or has excess
body fat that probably can affect one’s health. This condition generally is described as having a
high body mass index by medical professionals. Health practitioners use Body mass index (BMI)
as a tool to evaluate if an individual has appropriate weight depending on height, sex as well as
age. The BMI ranging from 25 to 29.9 shows that an individual bears an excess weight while the
BMI of 30 and above indicates that one may be suffering from obesity.
According to the Ottawa charter for health promotion, primary prevention for obesity can
be reduced though reorienting health services, advancing own skills and supporting population
action. This essay focuses on expounding on how the nurses’ role and the concept of health
literacy, health education, and health promotion related to the empowerment of Dandenong
population in Melbourne Australia; in reference to Ottawa Charter.
In accordance with Ottawa Charter, there are five actions fields for health promotion that
were highlighted in the charter:
Building healthy public policy
This is the first among the health promotion actions areas outlined by the World Health
Organization in the Ottawa charter. This health policy focus on merging different but
corresponding methodologies comprising of the statute, economic measures, tax policy, and
legislative alteration. This is because health promotion is something further than health cares.
Thus the policy puts health on the schedule of policymakers in every sector and levels. The
schedule directs the policymakers to be informed on the health results of their pronouncements
and to admit their accountability for health (Pengilley, & Kelly, 2018).

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The Obesity health promotion project in the Dandenong community for female aged 25
to 44, focus on a finding of hindrances to the implementation of healthy community plans in
non-health regions. Henceforth, implementing strategies of eradicating of such obstacles through
health literacy, education, and promotion. A profession nurse finds if low health literacy is
associated with excess body weight and obesity in Dandenong population, and considers
enhancing health literacy as one of the plans for combating Dandenong females’ weight problem
(Díez et al, 2018).
Health literacy can be done through organizing seminars for the female with the planned
age, where the nurse can provide vital information on how to maintain proper body weight as
well as prominent remedies for obesity. For the case of health education, printed scripts with
obesity prevention measures can be given to the population targeted when they attend seminars
or those who visit the health care centers. This will help contribute to a significant number of
well-informed people hence reducing or even eliminating cases of health problems related to
obesity.
Creating supportive environments
The action is based on stimulating a healthy environment in areas like protection of the
natural resources, promoting healthy working conditions, altering patterns of life that are not
healthy and use of leisure as well as work as a source of health for societies. Due to a rapidly
fluctuating environment in terms of technology, urbanization, work, and energy production;
efficient evaluation of the health is crucial and should be surveyed by action. This is to certify
the progressive advantage of health to the public (Flynn, 2015).

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The obesity health promotion program aims at ensuring that the Dandenong community
can plan for works that aids in creating a healthy community. The professional role nurse is to
provide health education based on the importance of conserving natural resources. For instance,
trees conservation which acts as carbon sinks hence preventing global warming that could result
if there was an accumulation of carbon gas in the ozone layer. Obesity disorder mostly is
facilitated by lifestyle pattern especially the workplace environment that does not involve
physical exercise or has little leisure time (Maximova, Hanusaik, Kishchuk, Paradis, &
O’Loughlin, 2016).
The nurse should ensure that such individuals in the community with such situations are
educated on how to balance life and work for their remaining healthy. Health Literacy
concerning benefits of Physical exercise in preventing obesity can be done through mass media
as well as mobile campaigns in the Dandenong community. The campaigns will involve
encouraging care for the community, our natural resources as well as care for one another. This
will help in arousing the people interest to take care of the environment which leads to a
successful health promotion plan hence minimizing Obesity in the community.
Strengthen Community Actions
In accordance with these actions, community development is dependent on the available
material and human resources that facilitate self-aid and social support. Hence, developing
flexible schemes in firming up the public to get involved in the direction of health issues. The
nurse will assist the Dandenong females in the community in setting the best primaries, making
choices, design policies and executing them to realize improved health (Thompson, Watson, &
Tilford, 2018).

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Nurse involvement in these activities will result in the empowerment of the community
which makes them have proprietorship and controlling of their accomplishments and destinies.
Through health education during obesity health promotion campaign, the nurse will involve the
females of specified age in making decisions like healthy food choices, feeding schedules and
how to balance one's diet (Chang, Chen, Chien, & Lin, 2016). The aim is to create a healthy
human resource that helps in nation building and reducing healthy cost.
Developing personal skills
This action specifically addresses the issues concerning enhancing social and individual
development via availing information vital for health promotion and providing health education
that leads to life skills. By doing that, it maximizes the alternatives present to the individual to
practice more control upon personal health, environment as well as deducing plans that are safe
for their health (Lamboglia et al, 2019). Obesity health promotion program aim at assisting the
Dandenong community in developing their own skills that are crucial for them to make
conducive decisions for their health.
Professional nurse in this program will encourage individuals to learn continuously
throughout life, so as to prepare every stage of obesity and be able to get by chronic disorder and
injuries. This will be conducted in a diverse setting like home, in schools, at work and
community setting at large. The campaign program will involve short training meet to deliver the
most vital tool and skills to benefit the Dandenong community (Peimani, Nasli-Esfahani, &
Shakibazadeh, 2019).

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Re-orienting health care services toward prevention of illness and promotion of health
According to reorient health services action, the accountability of ensuring health
promotion in every health service is seen as teamwork constituting of people, communal groups,
health practitioners, government and all health organizations (Karapliagou, Kellehear, &
Wegleitner,2018). In the Dandenong community, professional nurses working in health
institution there will be advised to move progressively in health preferment route for obesity
eradication in this community. Health service providers will have a greater responsibility of
ensuring that every female patient of age bracket mentioned earlier who visits the clinic undergo
a section of at least one hour of explanation of how to prevent obesity and later given a printed
script with all those guidelines.
This obesity health literacy and education should enhance people and community to
attain a healthier life, as well as opening paths among health organizations and wider societal,
governmental, commercial and physical environment constituents. Stronger research based on
how to impact good professional education as well as training about obesity for health workers in
the Dandenong community is also part of a health promotion program. The campaign will point
out to the ministry of health, some of the necessary skills required for all health service providers
to be at a position of offering quality services. This will result in alteration of attitude and
organization of health centers by refocusing on the complete requirement of people in the
community (Marks, Sisirak, & Heller, 2019).
Impact of health literacy to the success of obesity health promotion program
Health literacy is a very effective tool for empowerment as it improves people self-
esteem hence influencing individual autonomy over life pattern decisions. Additionally, it also

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empowers people to engage in decision-making procedures. As a result, this can lead to system
broader benefits, for example, advanced efficacy and effectiveness by authorizing people to
exercise more individual accountability for their health (Sousa et al, 2019).
The importance of people participating in decision-making concerning health matters is
to provide them with a chance to create awareness as well as maximizing community pressure on
issues that need to be adjusted so as to achieve a healthy community. Therefore, the nurse will
think of developing of all alternative learning schemes to ensure that everyone acquires
significance concerning obesity prevention measures (Wilson, 2018).
Conclusion
The essay has mainly focused on highlighting the ideas in the five Ottawa charter actions
on health promotion and relating ideas in those actions with the obesity health promotion
program or rather campaign in the Dandenong community. Specifically, females aged 25 to 44
are the target population and the paper address several strategies to follow in ensuring that the
community gets proper healthy literacy and health education concerning obesity. Role of
professional nurse in delivering this is also outlined in the essay. Finally, health promotion
program can only succeed if the populace has good health literacy and health education, which
facilitates the community empowerment thus creating a sense of ownership; and action that
targets at community and political change.

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References
Chang, S. H., Chen, M. C., Chien, N. H., & Lin, H. F. (2016). Effectiveness of community‐based
exercise intervention programme in obese adults with metabolic syndrome. Journal of
clinical nursing, 25(17-18), 2579-2589.
Díez, J., Gullón, P., Sandín Vázquez, M., Álvarez, B., Martín, M., Urtasun, M., ... & Franco, M.
(2018). A community-driven approach to generate urban policy recommendations for
obesity prevention. International journal of environmental research and public health,
15(4), 635.
Flynn, M. A. (2015). Empowering people to be healthier: public health nutrition through the
Ottawa Charter. Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, 74(3), 303-312.
Karapliagou, A., Kellehear, A., & Wegleitner, K. (2018). The public health end-of-life care
movement: history, principles, and styles of practice. Psychosocial Issues in Palliative
Care: A Community Based Approach for Life Limiting Illness, 1.
Lamboglia, C. G., de Moura Carvalho, L., de Vasconcelos Filho, J. E., de Sousa, F. C. L., &
Silva, C. B. (2019). Interactive Digital Mobile Gaming as a Strategic Tool in the Fight
Against Childhood Obesity. In Healthcare Policy and Reform: Concepts, Methodologies,
Tools, and Applications (pp. 830-851). IGI Global.
Marks, B., Sisirak, J., & Heller, T. (2019). Health Promotion and People with Intellectual
Disability. In Physical Health of Adults with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities
(pp. 359-379). Springer, Cham.

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Maximova, K., Hanusaik, N., Kishchuk, N., Paradis, G., & O’Loughlin, J. L. (2016). Public
health strategies promoting physical activity and healthy eating in Canada: are we
changing paradigms?. International journal of public health, 61(5), 565-572.
Peimani, M., Nasli-Esfahani, E., & Shakibazadeh, E. (2019). Ottawa charter framework as a
guide for type 2 diabetes prevention and control in Iran. Journal of Diabetes & Metabolic
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Pengilley, A. J., & Kelly, P. M. (2018). Building the machine: the importance of governance in
obesity policy. Frontiers in public health, 6, 221.
Sousa, P., Duarte, E., Ferreira, R., Esperança, A., Frontini, R., Santos‐Rocha, R., ... & Marques,
N. (2019). An mH ealth intervention programme to promote healthy behaviours and
prevent adolescent obesity (TeenPower): A study protocol. Journal of advanced nursing,
75(3), 683-691.
Thompson, S. R., Watson, M. C., & Tilford, S. (2018). The Ottawa Charter 30 years on: still an
important standard for health promotion. International Journal of Health Promotion and
Education, 56(2), 73-84.
Wilson, K. L. (2018). A Nutrition Education Program for Advanced Practice Registered Nurses
Caring for Obese Patients.

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