Future Directions and Strategies

Obesity Prevention and Control

Weltee Wolo

Rasmussen College

Author Note

This paper is being submitted on November 19, 2017 Nichole Crais’s

Epidemiology H430/HSC4500 course

Obesity Prevention and Control

1. How healthcare workers overcame the limitations of the past approach(es) to prevention and control and came to develop the current approach.

Initially, obesity was viewed as an individual problem which required personal or family intervention to prevent and control. Also, Policies and programs propagating healthy eating and regular physical activities in a person’s routine behavior were initiated. The challenge with individual treatment was that people were preoccupied most of the time with their daily activities leaving very little time for physical exercise. Besides this it became difficult for people to watch their diet considering that most of the time they were either working or paying attention to their social networks or other information technologies; thus resulted to feeding on junk foods.

To develop the effectiveness of the prevention and control policies and programs, a public health approach was developed whose main function was to initiate and implement population-based strategies for the prevention and control of excessive gain in weight (Kumanyika, Parker, & Sim, 2010). This approach would use a population-based classification that would group patients depending on their age and the level of risk of effects of the disease. The benefits of this approach were that it shaped patient behavior and it was more cost-effective.

2. Summarize the issues or problems with the current approaches to prevention and control of the disease.

The major challenge was the engagement of primary care in implementing prevention and control strategies. There was a need for specialists such as nutritionists and dietitians. Other challenges include limited practitioner self-efficiency due to inadequate training, lack of reimbursement and lack of specialist commitment during office hours. This does not only affect care delivery, but it also lowers the participation of people with obesity, therefore a reduction in the population diabetes prevention and control.

As much as the approach may focus on motivating a patient’s commitment to change eating and healthy behavior it may turn out to be ineffective. Some patient may experience stigmatization due to the stereotypes that exist about obesity (Batra, Strecher, & Keller, 2015). This may affect their participation and commitment to the treatment and control program.

References

Batra, R., Strecher, V. & Keller, P. (2015). Leveraging Consumer Psychology for Effective Health Communications: the Obesity Challenge. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis.

Kumanyika, S., Parker, L. & Sim, L. (2010). Bridging the evidence gap in obesity prevention: a framework to inform decision making. Washington, D.C: National Academies Press.