Practice Problem: Obesity
Title: Practice Problem: Obesity
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Introduction
Obesity is a grave public health issue in the United States, resulting in numerous deaths, and huge healthcare costs every year. Recent research has established that obesity is a major factor in the exceptionally slow pace of life expectancy improvement in the US (Preston, Vierboom & Stokes, 2017). Other research has shown that minorities, especially minors, are more susceptible to obesity. This is because of several factors, including culture, genetic predispositions, financial ability and education level, among a multitude of other issues. Working to contain obesity is likely to have a tremendous impact on public health in the community in focus, especially due to the other issues associated with obesity such as hypertension, heart disease, and some forms of cancer.
Potential benefits and harms
Childhood obesity is one of the most far-reaching epidemics in the country. It is one of the leading causes of hypertension in African American youth, a condition that could potentially cause damage to other body organs including kidneys, eyes, and the heart. The causes of childhood obesity and obesity in general, are multifaceted, and differ from one community to the next. While existing research is crucial when coming up with interventions to reduce the prevalence of obesity, local solutions to some of the contributing and risk factors are necessary.
Research conducted by Michaud et al (2017) aims to show the real benefits, health and economic, of obesity interventions in communities. In their research on how reduced or prevented obesity would affect a community of African American and Hispanic individuals, the experts established that the return on investment would be more than ten-fold. Fit and less obese people would be expected to be more efficient and earn more money at work, have fewer cases of kidney and heart disease, as well as cancer. Focusing on obesity would therefore have real economic benefits for the community and the hospital as well.
One of the most important benefits of evidence-based practice is the improvement of existing interventions, as well as the formulation of new ones that are more specific, or more efficient in alleviating a health concern. In the case of obesity, new person-specific interventions have been formulated, as described by Ulian et al (2018). The conventional means of weight loss, such as restricted eating, have dangerous side effects, such as binge-eating and other eating disorders. The focus on a specific community that is capable of producing unique interventions to a community is a welcome break from generalized, and sometimes outdated, interventions for obesity in minorities.
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Competing personal and professional values
Some of the main contributors of obesity are actually artificial, in the sense that marketing, and economic considerations drive some eating habits that cause obesity. While it may be ideal to single them out and describe these practices, it may lead to lawsuits and unnecessary confrontations that might water-down the research outcomes, as well as fail to provide the intended interventions.
Potential objections
In the current difficult era, when the world at large and the hospital in question are under severe operational and financial stress, it may seem ill guided to carry out this research, and the interventions that it advocates. The importance of this research cannot be ignored, however. The issue of co- morbidities affecting Covid 19 patients has been well publicized. It is clear that this research will have far-reaching implications for health-care provision at the hospital, and the health of the community in general.
References
Preston, S., Vierboom, Y., & Stokes, A. (2017). The role of obesity in exceptionally slow US mortality improvement. PNAS, 115 (5) 957-961.
Michaud, T., You, W., Wilson, K., Su, D., McGuire, T., Almeida, F., Bayer, A., & Estabrooks, P. (2017). Cost effectiveness and return on investment of a scalable community weight loss intervention. Preventive Medicine, 105, 295-303.
Ulian, M. et al (2018). Effects of a new intervention based on the Health at Every Size approach for the management of obesity: The “Health and Wellness in Obesity” study. PLOS One, 13(7). e0198401.
