Question

Child Obesity Considerations related to the nurse’s role in caring for people of child obesity emergingpopulation.APA reference citation must be included

Answer 1

Obesity is defined as "the excessive accumulation of body fat resulting in a body mass index (BMI) that is significantly above the norm and is associated with increased risk of illness, disability, and death." obesity results from a person's metabolism and hormone irregularities, which leads to dysfunction in satiety hormones and long-term energy storage. Obesity is a chronic metabolic disease. Childhood obesity potentially leads to a host of long-term conditions in later life. The teasing, discrimination and stigma encountered by children who are overweight or obese is socially destructive and can lead to poor mental health.

Consequences of obesity:

• Cardiovascular disease

• Atherosclerosis

• Diabetes

• Hypertension

• Central obesity

Causes:

• obesity can be due to genetic, metabolic and environmental factors

• prenatal and perinatal nutrition, intake and utilization of energy, birth weight, maternal diabetes, and socioeconomic, behavioural and cultural factors

• low levels of physical activity, such as increased time spent watching television or using a computer, and dietary factors, such as increased intake of energy

• foods such as soft drinks and fast foods, and dietary behaviour, such as frequency of eating and meal size

Nurse’s role:

The main role of the nurse is to promote healthy lifestyle that will reduce the risks of obesity. Some of the healthy lifestyle patterns are breastfeeding the baby, physical activity, regular and healthy meals, weight assessment. In some places the school nurses play a vital role, they are encouraged to follow the childhood obesity education programme for the parents of the children. A school intervention programme in Massachusetts promotes eating five portions of fruit and vegetables, a maximum of 2 hours’ television time and at least 1 hour of physical activity each day. Nurses may also be in a position to address practical matters, such as the availability of school and work canteens and the choice of food offered, or to consider the psychosocial and cultural dynamics that affect health behaviours that lead to obesity. behavioural modification interventions should be given to children and parents together or separately for improving weight-loss outcomes in both parents and children.

Recommendations for nurses (Berkowitz and Borchard, 2009) in relation to childhood obesity include:

• Advocating for the promotion of increased physical activity at governmental level  

• Supporting efforts to preserve and enhance parks, to develop walking and bicycle paths, and to promote the use of physical activity opportunities by families.

• Engaging families with parental obesity in prevention activities

• Encouraging parenting styles that support increased physical activity and reduce sedentary behaviours

• Encouraging parental modelling of healthy dietary choices

Prevention, early detection and the appropriate treatment of obesity are of great importance in nursing practice. Nurses can and should participate in health promotion and education for the prevention of obesity. Nurses can promote appropriate nutrition advice not only to the general public, but most importantly to policy-makers.

Reference:

• Chrystalleni Lazarou, Christiana Kouta, The role of nurses in the prevention and management of obesity, British Journal of Nursing, 2010, Vol 19, No 10.

• Katie Phillips Fiona Wood Paul Kinnersley, Tackling obesity: the challenge of obesity management for practice nurses in primary care, Family Practice, Volume 31, Issue 1, 1 February 2014, Pages 51–59.

• David Haslam, Chair, National Obesity Forum and Debbie Cook, Nurse consultant, vice-chair National Obesity Forum, Tackling childhood obesity, nursing in practice, Tuesday 14th June, 2016.

• Leslie Anne Peek, Interventions in childhood obesity, clinical advisor, October 17, 2016.

• Rebecca Oswald, Childhood obesity and nursing interventions, (2016). Senior Honors Theses. 512.