Describe about the Prevention of Non-Communicable Diseases.
Abbotsford Primary School is a small government school situated in the Lithgow Street and a suburb of City of Yarra which is the local government area in Abbotsford, Victoria, Australia. It was established in the year of 1877 and it consisted of brick building of polychrome that is historic considered as a worth for preservation by National Trust. The school’s roof is made of tiles previously made of slate roof. The school is planned symmetrically and is having a tower and central gable slightly projecting outside at each end. It is located in the inner suburb of Abbotsford and is very vibrant and diverse in nature. The school is a bilingual school with Chinese and English. The school consists of the students majorly from all cultural backgrounds and therefore has a multicultural community. Despite of the students drawn from the local government area, there are students also from outside the locality which is a reflection of its demographic characteristics and community. There are families from English and Vietnamese correspondence. The students have a great passion for learning of different languages and that gives them a better understanding of diverse cultures. The environment of the school is very safe, friendly and provides a learning ambience for the students. The community is well established with proper planning and sustainable practices. The community established many garden beds and water tanks installation. There is well ventilation and ample lightening in the school by extending the existing windows those were arched and added a panel towards the bottom. There are bollards, garden planting in the school grounds and local parks in the surrounding community. The surrounding consists of Collingwood Farm for children, arts center, state library and museum. The supporting and learning environment of the school and the surrounding community encourages many enrolments from outside the local community.
The community resources are well established encouraging the school programs and considered as a social hub for the families from different backgrounds to support and enjoy sharing their culture among themselves. The friendly and learning environment has increased the enrolments since 2012. The school is well equipped with library, essential learning equipments according to the Victorian Essential Learning Standards and the curriculum is planned, taught and assessed through an integrated approach. The school is supported by the Primary Welfare Officer who supports many programs to encourage the personal, physical and social learning of the school. The students makes visit in the Collingwood Children’s Farm situated in the nearby community and the school also organizes many outdoor activities like bush walking and orienteering for the students of aged 3-6. The school also conducts physical education classes, art therapy and reading and speech assistance classes that helped the students to develop in a learning and strong literacy environment. There are community health workers who conduct programs in the schools to initiate and implement approaches encouraged to create awareness and inculcate healthy habits in the school.
The overweight and obesity is a very serious health disorder that is affecting pupils in a devastating manner. The children are overweight than normal according to their age and height. The overweight and obesity in children has reached an alarming stage and the number has doubled in the last few years and one in five children is affected by obesity or overweight in Australia that is around 25% (“Overweight and obesity (AIHW)”, 2016). In the recent years, obesity and overweight has been declared as the second contributor to the burden of disease. Seeing the current rate of increasing incidence of overweight and obesity in children, it has been predicted that by 2020, there will be about 65% increase in the number of obese children (“Who is overweight? (AIHW)”, 2016). There are many factors that contribute to the obese condition in children like metabolism, genetics, lifestyle, eating habits and environment. The obesity in children is generally idiopathic and genetics contribute only 10% associated with improper hormonal problems. The energy imbalance in children when there is increase in total intake of energy exceeding the expenditure of energy. The reduction in energy expenditure is due to adoption of sedentary lifestyle in children. There is lack of physical exercise, excess intake of carbohydrate or protein or fat diet that contributes to the overweight condition in children. The attitude in children and families regarding food habits also reflects the patterns of intake of food, physical exercise and leisure time selection. The food choice in children that includes high fat or carbohydrate is a major factor causing obesity in children. There is also lack of physical exercise in their daily life as they spend most of their leisure time in watching television or playing video games on computers. The children having overweight parents also greatly influence them to pursue the type of lifestyle. The overweight parents are less concerned about the ill effects of overweight and the health related risks in them. The genetics is also a factor having a family history of obesity making the children susceptible to obesity. A diet low in fruits, green vegetables and other essential nutrients also make the children prone to eat high calorie foods leading to overweight and obesity. The consumption of highly sweetened beverages makes the children prone to overweight and risk for obesity. The surveys made by the Australian Dietary Guidelines showed that the Australian children are consuming foods rich in carbohydrates or fats more than required. Therefore, there is an urgent need to look in the matter of increasing overweight and obesity in children and the related health risk.
The epidemiology of obesity in children is shocking in Australia. It is increasing every year and is in a shocking state. The overweight and obesity in children has a great impact hampering their later life. The child below the age of 15 years has patterns of overweight and obesity associated with socio-economic factors, ethnic and indigenous status. According to the National Health Survey, 18% of overweight and 7% obese children that is 25% of children aged 5-18 years. There is large number of obese boys than girls and the pattern is shown to increase as the age progresses. There are about 30% of children were found to be overweight in socially disadvantageous groups and about 20% of children are obese belonging to the high socio-economic levels. The boys of year two, four and six and girls of kindergarten and year 2 were found to be overweight. The obesity is seen in the children of earlier age 2-5 that accounts for 8.9 per cent and about two per cent of them are highly obese (“Obesity and Overweight | National Health and Medical Research Council”, 2016). The children of age 6-11 are extremely obese and that accounts for 7.8 per cent. About 41 million of children below the age of five are suffering from obesity or overweight during 2014 and there is a significant increase in the number in the progressing years (“Obesity and overweight”, 2016). The epidemic of obesity or overweight is getting increased and posing a threat to the developing nations. According to World Health Organization, obesity is one of the major cause of disease burden and quite preventable. The obesity is affecting the children and might get obesity as they grow older. The International statistics shows that there is a great increase in the incidence of obesity in children and about 77% of the countries are getting affected by this disorder.
As a Public Health Officer working for the state Department of Health, children are the major stakeholder in the school for the implementation of intervention and prevention of the non-communicable disease like overweight and obesity in the school. In a school, children are the main stakeholders that need to be targeted to implement and execute the prevention interventions to make them aware and prevent them from non-communicable disease like overweight and obesity. The children are the main targets in a school as the problem of overweight and obesity is hampering their health and hampering their life in the later stages. The children have to suffer from many health consequences and increased risk for heart ailments like cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, asthma and other health related consequences. The obesity in children has many psychological effects along with physical problems. They experience social discrimination and low esteem among their age group and in the society. The obesity is diagnosed and treated on time; it would help them to lead a healthy life in the later life. The obesity has many harmful effects on children exposing them to great risk of high blood pressure and cholesterol making them prone to cardiovascular diseases. There is also impairment of glucose tolerance, type two diabetes and insulin resistance in children. The children who are overweight are prone to breathing problems and asthma. The behavioral, psychological and depression is highly prevalent among the school going children. The lack of confidence and low self esteem hamper their quality of life and impair the physical, social and emotional well being. Therefore, the above mentioned complications and associated health hazards shows that there is an urgency to implement intervention strategies in the school to curb the ill effects of obesity and overweight in the children.
The foundation for the good health starts from childhood and after home life, schools offer the basic education. The school is the best place to implement strategies for prevention of diseases and create awareness while inculcating the healthy habits for their later life. The intervention strategy starts with the collection of data from the students and their teachers. As the students in Abbotsford Primary School are from different cultural backgrounds, their food and lifestyle patterns would be different. Therefore, there is a need for these important information along with their body mass index, their family medical history, the students medical history, their daily food habit and level of exercise in their daily life. As mentioned above, the school is aimed at inculcating good habits in their students, still there is a need to make children aware of the ill effects of obesity and inculcate good healthy habits in them for their later life. The intervention strategies include measuring the involvement of physical activity and the eating behaviors and their attitude towards overweight and obesity. As the target population is children, there is requirement of involvement of their teachers and families for the successful implementation of the intervention strategies. The barrier in the implementation strategy would be as they are children, the education about the non communicable disease like overweight and obesity would require the involvement of the school and community as a whole.
As a Public Health Officer, they need to be taught with great patience and in a friendly manner so that they could able to understand the meaning of what obesity is, how it is caused and how they affect their life. The implementation of intervention strategies would be promoting the importance of physical activity in their daily life, the facts about consuming healthy food and nutritional diet in their food. The health services emphasizing on promoting healthy habits, involvement in outdoor games rather than involving in watching television or playing video games. There should also be conduction of health programs teaching them about facts on obesity and healthy eating. There is also requirement of psychological counseling and social services for the children suffering from overweight or prone to the disorder.
The intervention strategy involves the improvement of health policies and nutrition at the school. There would be a requirement of physical education classes for the children once a week for inculcating good habits in them. There is requirement of health policy makers and officers to evaluate the intervention strategies that are implemented. There would be curriculum that would emphasis on improving the health behaviors in the children and skills to help them adopt the healthy behaviors. The strategy would be making them learn and understand by providing them opportunities to implement those skills in their daily life with main focus on the overcome of the barriers that stop them from adopting these behaviors. The children need to be encouraged to participate in physical activities as much as possible. The community needs to be taught to encourage these intervention strategies and work in collaboration with the school for the successful working of these intervention strategies to gain optimal outcomes. There should be an implementation of quality and healthy meal at the school discouraging unhealthy food items. The above mentioned intervention strategies to prevent the non communicable disease like obesity and overweight would make the children aware and help them to spread the message among their families and friends. The community should encourage the health food habit by advertising healthy foods, limited access to the unhealthy foods and high availability of healthy nutritious foods.
The communication strategy includes the health communication among the children and conducting campaigns for the children to understand the concepts of healthy habits and association of ill effects of obesity on health and related risk. The parents should communicate with their children and teach them about various nutrition facts and also discouraging them to consume unhealthy food. The communication strategy involves the media, marketing about prevention of overweight and obesity and discouraging advertisement of unhealthy foods favorite among children. The encouragement of teacher-student communication so that there is no barrier in providing them the information required to prevent a serious disorder like overweight and obesity among the children. The parents should actively participate in different campaigns and programs designed for the prevention of obesity and overweight in children. The social marketing would be helpful to a great extent as the children are addicted to television and that would help to influence their behavior and attitude towards the concept of obesity. Before the implementation of these strategies, there should be communication of the public health officers with the children so that they could understand the purpose of the intervention and help us to provide the information required to evaluate our implementation strategies. The media plays an important role in highlighting the issues that are affecting the society. The campaigns by the social marketing help to spread information and encourage the children and their parents persuade good healthy habits in their daily life. The media literacy also helps by making the children understand, analyze and evaluate the social information they address.
The evaluation strategy includes the meeting of the goals in the plan of action, the fulfillment of the objectives and timely evaluation of the progress of the intervention strategies aimed at preventing obesity in the students of the school. The evaluation greatly depends on the timely and reliable information that is available during the planning and implementation of intervention strategies. The data collection is important in monitoring of the implementation plan. It also includes the accurate data interpretation and analysis that would help to evaluate the level of the success of the intervention among the students and how they are inculcating them in their life. The evaluation of the progress of this intervention largely depends on the activities of the students at school and at home like restricted use of sweet drinks, eating fruits and green vegetables, having healthy lunch and snacks, encouraging them to avoid unhealthy foods and drinks. The evaluation of level of physical activities in the school, active playing session, how they inculcate walking when riding to school, safe transport and other health related activities. There is also a need for evaluation of various curriculums, policies and extent of families and the surrounding community involvement in implementing the various strategies.
References
Obesity and Overweight | National Health and Medical Research Council. (2016). Nhmrc.gov.au. Retrieved 6 December 2016, from https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/health-topics/obesity-and-overweight
Obesity and overweight. (2016). World Health Organization. Retrieved 6 December 2016, from https://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs311/en/
Overweight and obesity (AIHW). (2016). Aihw.gov.au. Retrieved 6 December 2016, from https://www.aihw.gov.au/overweight-and-obesity/
Who is overweight? (AIHW). (2016). Aihw.gov.au. Retrieved 6 December 2016, from https://www.aihw.gov.au/who-is-overweight/
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