PHCA9507: Applying Ottawa Charter for Obesity Health Promotion

This essay discusses health promotion strategies for addressing obesity, focusing on the Ottawa Charter's action areas. It highlights the negative impacts of obesity on individuals and society, emphasizing the importance of health promotion programs. The essay delves into the 'Strengthening Community Action' priority area of the Ottawa Charter, providing examples of initiatives such as school programs, community engagement, and reducing the price of nutritious foods. It stresses the need for community residents to develop health literacy and awareness about obesity to ensure the success of these initiatives. The conclusion reiterates the growing concern of obesity and the need for collaborative efforts to empower communities and promote lifestyle changes. Desklib offers a wealth of similar resources for students.

Running head: HEALTH PROMOTION PLANNING
HEALTH PROMOTION PLANNING
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Introduction:
Health promotion can be explained as the procedure that enables people in increasing
their control over their health and thereby participate in improvement of their health. It can be
seen to move beyond the focus of the individual behaviors towards a wide range of different
types of social as well as environmental interventions (Dyment et al. 2017). The main purpose of
the health promotion programs is to positively influence the health behaviors of the different
people and other communities and helps in developing the living and working conditions of the
people thereby influencing their health. Recently, health promotion programs are considered to
be one of the effective ways for helping the nation. It helps to fight with the chronic disorder of
the obesity and therefore most of the concerned authorities are proposing health promotion plans
for the effective handling of the disorder and reducing the negative effects that the disorder is
having on the nation (Thompson, Watson and Tilford 2018). This assignment will first highlight
the harmful outcomes that the disorder of obesity is having on the patient. Following that, it will
successfully show how choosing one of the aspect of the Ottawa charter can successfully help in
initiating health promotion and helping people overcome the negative effects of the disorder.
Obesity and its negative outcome:
Obesity is one of the serious as well as chronic disorders that has huge number of
negative impacts on the different systems of the body. Individuals who are seen to be overweight
or obese are exposed to the greater risk of the development of the severe conditions like different
types of heart diseases (Baum and fisher 2014). They are also responsible for development of
type 2 diabetes as well as bone and joint diseases (Fry and Zask 2016). Many other health effects
may result from obesity that are increases in blood pressure, increased chances of sleep apnea.

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Different types of metabolic syndrome and other types of cancer. Different types of psychosocial
effects are also seen to occur that mainly comprise of depression from body image, bullying,
anxiety, social exclusion and many others that affect the quality of life (Waters et al. 2018).
Statistical reports provided by the Australian Institute of Health and welfare have stated that two
adults in every three adults were overweight or obese in the year from 2014 to 2015. They had
stated that 5% of the burden of the diseases is mainly contributed to the obesity and overweight
situations in the year 2011. Again 28% of the adults in the nation was seen to be obese in the
year 2014 to 2015 and this contributed to an increase from 19% in the year 1995 (Fry and Zask
2016). Huffingtonpost has stated that in the year 2014-2015 there was staggering 63.4 percent of
the Australian adults who were obese or overweight which was over half of the population of the
nation. Therefore, in order to change the scenario, it is extremely important to learn about the
causes of the disorder and set health promotion initiatives accordingly (Baum and fisher 2014).
Besides the genetic and metabolic causes, a large number of lifestyle factors mainly dedicate in
development of obesity. Overeating in a course of sedentary lifestyles, having diet high in
percentage of calories but now working out to burn the calories result in accumulation of calories
contributing to weight gain (Naidoo and Wills 2016). Moreover sedentary lifestyles, not
exercises or involving in physical activities increases the chance. Eating on large number of
calorigenic low price fast foods are also one contributing factor. Therefore, it is extremely
important to design a health promotion program that would help people to learn about the causes
of obesity and take services that can prevent or cure them from being affected by the disorder
(Waters et al. 2018).

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OTTAWA CHARTER: HEALTH PROMOTION THEORY
Ottawa Charter is an international agreement that was held in the month of November in the year
1986 in Canada and was arranged by the World health organization. Several actions were
proposed by the charter for achieving better health for all individuals within 2000 and beyond
(Kalantari et al. 2017). In order to achieve such aim, it is important for all the governmental
sections as well as non governments local authorities, media, industry and other to work in a
coordinated fashion so that effective health promotion can be ensured effectively. This charter is
mainly seen to comprise of five important actions that are widely used by the sectors of health
promotion for effectively recognizing and thereby utilizing them for controlling the negative
outcomes of disorder or improper behavioral or lifestyle habits (Naidoo and Wills 2016). The
health promotion sectors mainly utilize this five action areas for promoting better health that is
actually a procedure of preventing ill health and thereby helping in advancing the health of the
entire population through effective interventions. These are “Developing Personal Skills,
Strengthening Community Action, Building Healthy Public Policy, Creating Supportive
Environment and lastly, Reorienting Health Services” (Turunen et al. 2017).
STRENGTHENING COMMUNITY ACTION: THE ACTION AREA OF THE
FRAMEWORK OF OTTAWA CHARTER:
This is one of the most important priority action that allows the individuals as well as the
communities where they reside to work together so that the concerned authorities can ensure that
proper priorities and strategies are implemented for achieving better health outcome (Jancey et
al., 2016). It also helps in enhancing the support as well s the encouragement among the different
communities for effective participation. It is mainly done to ensure that all the services are

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accessible to every members of the community (Kalantari et al. 2017). It should be also taken
care that all the information should be available and that all the services are accessible to all the
individuals. Researchers are of the opinion that this action area is mainly responsible for making
the decisions and thereby planning different strategies regarding what is good for one’s health
and thereby implementing them successfully to achieve this. Here the health promoters would be
working with the communities by setting priorities, making decisions, planning different
strategies and thereby taking actions (Gerritsen et al. 2016). This step would require access to
important information, learning opportunities and even financial support.
STEPS THAT NEED TO BE TAKEN WITHIN THIS ACTION AREA: EXAMPLES OF
THE INITIATIVES TO BE TAKEN TO REDUCE OBESITY
 One of the most important initiatives of under this priority area would be to achieve
cooperation in the school community as well as in the canteen in providing the students
with the nutritious choices of meals. The school community should come together and
take the steps of including detailed education about obesity and its impacts on health in
the school curriculum so that children can be taught about correct lifestyles that they need
to adopt. Researchers are of the opinion that physical recreation should also be placed as
an important requirement upon the school community (Turunen et al. 2017). This is very
important for educating the significance of being physically active for prevention of the
obesity (Jancey et al., 2016).
 Local Healthwatch, public health teams as well as the community involvement should
plan to engage the local people so that they can effectively identify their priorities in
relation to that of the weight issues. This can be stated with the help of an example. They
might consider issues like that of the crimes, the presence of different hot food

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takeaways, alcohol outlets, pavement parking, lack of well maintained green space,, lack
of sense of community and other should be set as priorities (Scriven 2017). Community
involvement as well s public health teams should be working with the local people as
well as groups and organizations to decide what actions they need to take on obesity
concerns (Gerritsen et al. 2016). The local broadcasting sectors should ban the use of
advertisements that enhance the habits of having oily and calorigenic food like chips,
cold drinks and takeaways foods like burgers and other snacks. Another initiative would
be incorporating the important organizations, public health bodies, council leaders,
director of public health and local authority community involvement teams to work
together to reduce the price of nutritious and organic food products so that the these types
of food can become affordable by the low socio-economic class of the community. This
would help to control inequality among distribution of nutritious food and all the
members of the community would get the scope to enjoy healthy living (Kalantari et al.
2017).
 Concerned heads of the community should take into account the cultural preferences and
inhibitions of the community residents and accordingly so physical activity sessions.
Here members can participate according to their cultural considerations and hence they
get would get the scope of weight management at the same time maintaining their
cultural traditions (Langford et al., 2015).
 However, all these sessions, services, reduction of price of nutrient rich food, banning of
improper ads – all would be futile unless the community residents first develop the
conception about the necessity to maintain health and to prevent obesity (Gerritsen et al.
2016). Therefore, it is very important for the communities to take the responsibility of

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first spreading the awareness about obesity so that the individuals develop health literacy.
They should first learn to understand the importance of maintaining the healthy lifestyles
and the various negative aspects that might affect them s they suffer from obesity
(Scriven 2017). For this reason, the community heads should try to arrange for health
education sessions where community residents would be requested to participate for
gaining knowledge and skills about health literacy. Moreover, community heads can also
circulate pamphlets; prepare advertisement boards across communities and many others
to make the residents careful about their health (Langford et al., 2015).
Conclusion:
From the above discussion, it becomes clear that obesity is one of the growing concerns
for the nation as with the passing of years, more and more individuals are falling prey to the
disorders. This is affecting their life to an extent where they are suffering from different physical
disorders like heart diseases, blood pressure issues, cancer and others and many emotional and
psychological impacts as well. Therefore, it is important for healthcare promoters to choose one
of the effective action areas following which initiatives would be set. By following the
“strengthening the community action” priority area, community leaders, public health teams,
different organizations and services and others should come together and develop steps by which
the community can be empowered and changes in lifestyle management can be ensured.

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References:
Baum, F. and Fisher, M., 2014. Why behavioural health promotion endures despite its failure to
reduce health inequities. Sociology of health & illness, 36(2), pp.213-225.
Dyment, J., Emery, S., Doherty, T. and Eckhardt, M., 2017. Move Well Eat Well: Case study of
a successful settings-based approach to health promotion. Health and Wellbeing in Childhood,
p.283.
Fry, D. and Zask, A., 2016. Applying the Ottawa Charter to inform health promotion programme
design. Health promotion international, 32(5), pp.901-912.
Gerritsen, S., 2016. Nutrition education for early childhood managers, teachers and nursery
cooks: a prerequisite for effective obesity prevention.
Jancey, J., Barnett, L., Smith, J., Binns, C. and Howat, P., 2016. We need a comprehensive
approach to health promotion. Health Promotion Journal of Australia, 27(1), pp.1-3.

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Kalantari, N., Mohammadi, N.K., Rafieifar, S., Eini-Zinab, H., Aminifard, A., Malmir, H.,
Ashoori, N., Abdi, S., Gholamalizadeh, M. and Doaei, S., 2017. Indicator for success of obesity
reduction programs in adolescents: Body composition or body mass index? Evaluating a school-
based health promotion project after 12 weeks of intervention. International journal of
preventive medicine, 8.
Langford, R., Bonell, C., Jones, H. and Campbell, R., 2015. Obesity prevention and the Health
promoting Schools framework: essential components and barriers to success. International
Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 12(1), p.15.
Naidoo, J. and Wills, J., 2016. Foundations for Health Promotion-E-Book. Elsevier Health
Sciences.
Scriven, A., 2017. Promoting Health: A Practical Guide-E-Book: Ewles & Simnett. Elsevier
Health Sciences.
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.
Turunen, H., Sormunen, M., Jourdan, D., Von Seelen, J. and Buijs, G., 2017. Health Promoting
Schools—a complex approach and a major means to health improvement. Health promotion
international, 32(2), pp.177-184.
Waters, E., Gibbs, L., Tadic, M., Ukoumunne, O.C., Magarey, A., Okely, A.D., Silva, A., Armit,
C., Green, J., O’Connor, T. and Johnson, B., 2018. Cluster randomised trial of a school-

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community child health promotion and obesity prevention intervention: findings from the
evaluation of fun ‘n healthy in Moreland!. BMC public health, 18(1), p.92.
References: