latest news: Combating Childhood Obesity | International Health Student

Saturday, April 6, 2013

Combating Childhood Obesity | International Health Student

April 4, 2013 by hubertz27

By Kara Shaughnessey

Obesity is a major problem worldwide. In 2008, more than 1.4 billion adults were overweight and in 2010 over 40 million children under the age of 5 were overweight (World Health Organization). The rate of obesity is increasing and there is need to be more to stop this epidemic. After reading ?Child obesity programmes struggle to survive cuts? it is even more apparent to me that there needs to be more programs like MEND and more financial support for obesity prevention programs.

In 2004 MEND (Mind, Exercise, Nutrition, Do It) began helping children and adults in the UK. MEND set out to provide healthy lifestyle programs for families in local communities, offer weight management programs in health and fitness, and provide knowledge, skills, resources and training to professionals and community leaders to prevent obesity in their communities (Mendcentral.org). Since its start in 2004, MEND has helped over 55,000 children and adults around the world. MEND?s successes in the UK led to its adoption in other countries like Australia, Canada and the US.

??? The MEND program consists of a 10 week program that focuses on reeducating families about their eating habits and how to change them, how to read food labels and being active. MEND is a program that focuses on changing habits by doing and being active. A major focus of the program is that the whole family is involved in exercising and changing their bad eating habits. The families participate in different physical activities to show the effects of sugary unhealthy food and healthy foods. It is more effective way for the families to be able to feel the difference of what eating healthy feels like compared to unhealthy eating habits. Families participating in the programs say that ?you can?t encourage your child to change their lifestyle and eating habits if you don?t do it yourself. So we are all doing it.? Making a lifestyle change as a family is much easier than trying to have only one of your children changes their habits. If children see their parents and other family members changing their habits they will be more likely to do so.

??? This is a program that I believe should be a high priority and should be receiving government funding to keep helping families that choose it. The program showed an average attendance rate of 86%, and after 10 weeks in the program 90% of children reduced their BMI. MEND has proven to be successful in helping children lose weight (http://us.mendcentral.org). However, while this program has been making progress in the way of helping decrease obesity it is not receiving enough funding. The article states that one of the reasons for lack of funding by the UK government is because of the belief that being obese is the individuals fault. There are so many factors that influence one?s weight that it is hard to pin point being obese as someone?s fault alone. There have been many studies that show individual genes, environment along with behavior effect on obesity and overweight. I feel that children especially are influenced by their environment. A child from a lower income living community where there are more fast food restaurants than grocery store or where there are no safe places outside to exercise would be much more likely to be obese. Even as a child, behaviors are greatly influenced by your parents and family. A child is usually not the one making the decisions on what food to eat every day. A child who has obese parents who eat badly and do not exercise will most likely copy these behaviors.

Programs like MEND are very important in fight against obesity. If those who are obese or overweight are able to have access to this program or others like it, this can prevent obesity form growing. Preventing obesity is much easier and less expensive than treating it. The Foresight Report (2007) states that unless something is done to help people live healthier by 2050 the treatment for overweight people will cost the UK economy ? 50 billion a year. In addition, obesity and overweight can lead to many other health problems such as heart disease, diabetes, some cancers, infertility, and high blood pressure. Treating these chronic diseases can be costly and with diseases like Type 2 diabetes becoming more common in children, the resources to treat them increases.? Therefore, it is more cost effective to invest into programs like MEND to prevent children from developing diseases like diabetes and other chronic diseases.

Sources:

Boseley, S. (2013). Child obesity programmes struggle to survive cuts: Only 1% of overweight and obese children are being offered weight loss programmes despite high success rates. The Guardian. Available from http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/feb/18/child-obesity-programmes-cuts
World Health Organization. Media Centre. Obesity and Overweight: Fact sheet