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Policy Priority Issue : Childhood Obesity

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Policy Priority Issue: Childhood Obesity
The number of childhood obesity cases were increasing in the State of Illinois that it required that the state demonstrate and execute The Obesity Prevention Initiative Act and Illinois Alliance to Prevent obesity. The Obesity Prevention Initiative Act was started in 2010, to address the need of starting a campaign that focuses on changing the sugary snacks and beverage provided in schools. The focus is on educating parents of children in the communities to facilitate the success of the policy.
One of the most common medical illnesses of school-age children is obesity. Childhood obesity can be attributed to sugary snacks and beverages provided at schools and homes. This paper will discuss the policy …show more content…

Candy, cookies, and donuts are bad for children to eat but some parents have verbalized that these foods that their children want to eat and it is what their kids are provided to eat all day (Dunford, Schultz, Rosenblum, Miller, & Lumeng, 2015). This is the kind of negative behavior of parents who really do not believe these behaviors cause obesity. According to the article (Lucan, 2016) a doctor in New York was appalled to discover that sugary snacks were being provided at the school that consisted of different kinds of chips, cakes, and drinks. She also discovered that candy was used as incentives or rewards in class projects. Social media can help with providing childhood obesity awareness considering people follow celebrities who are influential (Harris, Moreland-Russell, Tabak, Ruhr, &Maier, 2014).
Empirical Evidence Childhood obesity is a rather new reality in the United States due to intake of sugary snacks and beverages, childhood obesity is the result of a sustained energy imbalance. Most youth never eat the required daily servings of fruits and vegetables; its noted only one in five eat the required servings (21%) (Moore, Wilke, & Desrochers, 2017). The availability of sugary snacks and beverages in schools are what one would call “junk food”. According to a study conducted by Ashlesha Datar and Nancy Nicosia (2012) students could purchase more than one single food and beverage items either

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