Influence Public Health

To protect the health, safety and wellbeing of everyone I care for. By ensuring that I identify health issues early I am able to inform the relevant people quickly and that will hopefully prevent the health issues getting worse, meaning that their health, safety, wellbeing and quality of life is improved and maintained as much as possible. It is also important to raise awareness to comply with company policies and legislation.

For second part of reading response, I choose to report on Promoting public understanding of public health article by our professor Stephen Bezruchka. I really enjoyed reading the article he wrote about how people in the America are being less healthy than those people in other rich nations. Promoting public awareness about this topic should be high priority for all Public Health majors. Health is the most important part of human life and it surprising to me that people in America are not really doing anything to change it. Solving this problem need individual supports and public supports.

Obesity is a major personal issue currently in America, that is influenced by the public issue of an excessive amount of fast food restaurants. The passage “French Fries as a Contraband” by Kathy McManus explains the effects of fast food by location. The Los Angeles government is trying to have a control on what their citizens eat by limiting the amount of fast food restaurants there are in a neighborhood/ area. They are trying to ban any new fast food restaurants from opening in a 32 mi.² area of South Central LA. Fast food is overall, unhealthy and causes major health issues. Fast food restaurants are most abundant in low income neighborhoods .One major idea from the text was people choose fast foods because it's closer to to them than fresher

Fast-food industries may try to “target children in their ads”, but it ultimately comes down to the adults-the parents- choosing to dine at these places and pork up their kids on the high-sugar sodas, salty French fries, and greasy burgers. If they would just take the time to look out the window, they would see the healthy alternatives to fast-food, and how the alternatives are literally right in front of

The Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative is a public private partnership, created in 2004 by the Pennsylvania state. It helped to create new supermarkets and refurbish or replace equipment at existing stores. The eligible stores were located in a low-income areas that were underserved, and to eligible for funding they agree to provide a full selection of fresh foods. The partnership funded more than 83 projects across Pennsylvania involving major national chains and smaller independent stores. Over the years the project has resulted in the creation and retention of about 5,000 jobs and 1.4 million square feet of retail space. Evidence from the program shows that adding more supermarkets with the access to high quality fruit and vegetable in an undeserved areas result in improved availability and an increased variety of foods in the community. It also shows that they are on the verge of reducing the high incidence of diet-related diseases by providing healthy food (Department of Health and Human Services, 2011, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Strategies to Prevent Obesity and Other Chronic Diseases: The CDC Guide to Strategies to Increase the Consumption of Fruits and Vegetables”, Atlanta U.S, http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/download/fandv_2011_web_tag508.pdf retrieved 5th May

Obesity is the #1 threat in America,not only affecting adults,but children too.In the Article( “Fast Food not A Weighty Problem”),”A new study shows that children who live near recreational amenities lowers their weight.Children should know they are being victimized,and it could threaten their lives.Furthermore,Obesity is a bigger

Because of this, food deserts are often seen as manifestations of structural inequalities in the food sales environment, which is believed to contribute to inequalities in diet and diet-related health outcomes. These problems related to food retail also further disadvantages low-income and minority ethnic groups, who are already inadequate in their ability to buy healthy foods. The less access to supermarkets and grocery stores in disadvantaged and poor neighborhoods may also create barriers to accessing healthy, yet low-costing food. Recent studies have suggested that food deserts may be linked to overall diet quality and the consumption of healthy foods and numerous diet-related health outcomes; more specifically, cardiovascular disease and obesity. On the other hand, if those in food deserts had increased access to supermarkets, it is predicted that there would be a lower prevalence of obesity

In other to prevent obesity, cities and counties have to encourage food retail establishments to promote healthier options through law and inducement. Retail food establishments like, chain restaurants, corner stores, supermarkets, farmers markets, and mobile vendors affect public health. Public officials have advocated a range of policy options to cities for improving access to healthy food and decreasing the popularity of unhealthy food in various retail food settings (Diller and Graff). Paul A. Diller and Samantha Graff convey to readers that “Regulating retail food establishments can be a powerful tool for improving a community’s food environment, especially in low-income “food deserts” — areas that lack full-service supermarkets and restaurants and are saturated with fast-food restaurants and liquor stores.” Cities challenging unusual obesity rates are considering numerous governing policies for expanding the convenience and accessibility of nutritious food, and diminishing the universality of fast-food restaurants and obesogenic packaged food. According to the article “Regulating Food Retail for Obesity Prevention: How Far Can Cities Go?” Diller and Graff indicate that “most states grant cities or counties some form of “home rule,” allowing for broad local policymaking authority. In many home-rule states, cities or counties exercise the “police power” — that is, the authority to regulate for the health, safety, and welfare of the community — concurrently with the state legislature.” This home rule is a form of dividing state and local power that allows municipalities to exercise only those powers directly assigned by state law. In most states, there is solid legal authority at the municipal level that accept obesity-prevention

One of today’s major problems is the prominence of obesity in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have given the definition of a body mass index of 30.0 or higher as being obese. When analyzing this data, one in three U.S. citizens is obese and one in twenty are considered extremely obese. The Obesity Action Coalition has also announced that between the 1970s and today, fast food restaurants have double at the same rate as obese Americans. (Carey) While this is not all the fault of the restaurant, there is a correlation between cheap fast food with no nutrition and obesity. With this data, you’d think that steps would be taken to protect our youth but instead, fast food restaurants now tend to pop-up around schools and low-income neighborhoods. At the same time, fast food companies have spent about $4 billion in a year to advertise with a target on children ages six to eleven. (Fast

Riverside Community Health Foundation. (2016). Theories and models frequently used in health promotion. Retrieved from http://www.rchf.org/grant-resources/

In conclusion, they observed living closer to large or small grocery stores lowered BMI z-scores, but living closer to fast food joints and restaurants caused higher BMI z-scores. Researchers determined median neighborhood income (socioeconomic class) was an effect modifier within the study for fast food joints and convenience stores. The risk from being closer to fast food joints and restaurants increased more when taking into account the lower SES neighborhoods. Researchers provided potential reasoning for the results, such as food affordability, time constraints, accessibility, high caloric food production, and placement of convenience stores. This research can be useful in creating policies to help curb the childhood obesity epidemic starting with food environments.

Obesity has substantially increased in the American population, affecting both adults and children. According to the Mayo Clinic, the definition of obesity is defined as a condition of increased body weight that is caused by an excessive accumulation of fat. Many factors contribute to weight gain such as the two important ones, poor diet and physical inactivity. As people are exposed to high fat foods and have very low physical activity, it’s so easy for that person to become overweight or obese. As in today’s society children tend to overeat, many changes in a child’s life are the reason why there is an increase in overeating. The place where children should be fed healthy and should influence them to eat healthy is actually where the problem starts. School cafeterias have been known to serve food with large fat content and low nutrition. School cafeterias even supply students with soda and candy machines (Kempster, 2004). According to a study done by King et al. (1999) has shown that fruits and raw vegetables given in school cafeterias has decreased substantially. Instead they provide unhealthy meals for these children like, pizza, tater tots, and many other numerous high level fat foods. At school children should have the access to eat healthy, however they are exposed to fast food choices everyday, making it difficult to support healthy eating (Kuntzman, 2004). The lack of physical activity is another major factor in the cause of childhood obesity. Due to the increase

The second policy option is to increase access to healthy foods by regulating prepared food options in Virginia’s government establishments. Regulating food options and enforcing stricter food guidelines in government establishments would help decrease childhood obesity. To combat the 28% adolescent obesity rate in Iowa, the state worked with the Randolph-Sheppard Vending Facility Program to require government facilities to have at least 30% of their accessible food options is healthy (CDC, 2014). A similar adaptation for Virginia could help regulate our food choices.

Researchers must consider the many built environments to which humans are exposed to throughout their lives in order to understand the obesity epidemic. This includes consideration of the neighborhoods the individual lives in, the schools or jobs they attend, the community they engage in food shopping, and policies that directly influence their choices. Altering the environment to encourage behaviors that prevent obesity is not an easy task, and must be done with realistic expectations. The Healthy Grooves Boston intervention would use a multilevel framework to target children in Boston. Daycares offer a window of opportunity to teach children (individual level) at an early age how to identify nutrient dense foods and how to be the catalyst of change in their families. After school workshops can teach parents (interpersonal level) physical activity guidelines as well as methods to limit screen time. By addressing one level at a time, in one community at a time, we could begin to see nationwide

Federal and States public health involvement has evolved over the years, because the relationship between the different levels of government are changing and due to the fact that we are now aware of the of threats to local communities well- being health, safety and our local communities expectations for governmental response to situations and as well