To What Extent Should Health Care Professionals Practice What They Preach

The APN and other primary care providers (PCPs) have a crucial role in meeting the goals for obesity prevention. The APN and PCPs are bound to make morally and ethically sound decisions in health care to influence the needs of the patients. Hence, they need to expand their roles from the usual practice of measuring patients’ height and weight to calculate BMI, growth, and development of their patients. Other helpful roles would include advocacy, modeling healthful behaviors, and counseling individuals and families in community obesity treatment and prevention initiatives. In advocacy, the APN support and campaign publicly for policy changes such as funding for obesity prevention research and social marketing to encourage healthy food choices and behaviors (Vine, Hargreaves, Briefel, & Orfield,

Behavioral determinants of health — examples include patterns of overweight and obesity; exercise norms; and use of illicit drugs, tobacco, or alcohol

As a Family Nurse Practitioner, I hope to teach disease prevention and use individualized treatment and advice to incorporate patients’ disease processes into their lifestyle. "Most deaths in the United States are preventable, and they are related to what we eat. Our diet is the number-one cause of premature death and the number-one cause of disability"(Greger & Stone, 2015, p. 1). Knowing those statistics scare me. After getting my Family Nurse Practitioner Degree, I would have the autonomy to educate my patients about their diet and how it can prevent and/or maintain their current

About 40 to 50% of adults in America are at risk for diseases such as stroke, kidney failure, heart attack, heart failure and obesity. Most of these diseases are brought on by hypertension which is brought on by unhealthy eating choices, poor diet and little to no exercise which has devastating effects on the body. Approximately 7 out of 10 Americans is prescribed or takes a prescription pill daily, half of those are diet related illnesses such a diabetes and one third of those individuals is obese. Two trillion medical-care costs are because of chronic diseases most of which are lifestyle habits/choices. Obesity in America costs about taxpayers about $123 billion via Medicare and Medicaid. Now that obesity has risen at an alarming rate, in some cases obesity is considered a disability for those that are physically or mentally impaired by it. Debatably a preventable disease with proper education on food, diet and exercise

One trend to illustrate this is the percentage of the San Mateo County adult population who establish healthy behaviors. These behaviors ¬include respondents who do not smoke cigarettes, are not overweight, exercise at least three times a week for 20 minutes, and who eat an average of at least five servings of fruits and vegetables per day. Only 5.4% of San Mateo County survey respondents report each of four primary health behaviors, a combination which limits cardiovascular and cancer risk. (Professional Research Consultants, Inc., 2013) The idea here is that the statistical findings are way lower compared to its preceding years (2001 with 9.2% and 2008 with 8.5%). We may, therefore, conclude that San Mateo adult residents are starting to exhibit healthy behaviors by not smoking cigarettes, not being overweight based on body mass index, exercising adequately, and including fruits and vegetables in their balanced nutritional diet.

I believe we all have a responsibility to take care of our bodies to the best of our abilities. As a physician assistant, I want to not only treat urgent care patients, but I aspire to help the “average” person change their life for the better. Proper nutrition and exercise is key. The current state of the people in America, health-wise, baffles me. So many people neglect the alarms that their bodies often give them. The snooze button should no longer be an option. As a key role in the healthcare industry, I plan on developing a strategic plan for each one of my patients. We should not settle on premature death.

Quality care demands that all patients be treated fairly and equally yet this is proven untrue. US healthcare providers have significantly approached this condition as an individual choice without conceptualizing the social influence of the problem. Health professionals including physicians, nurses and psychologists have been found through research that they have held a bias attitude. “Patient autonomy extends not only the right to control or refuse treatment, but also to the ability to undertake activities with known risks and consequences. Our society values the individual’s rights to make his/her own decisions, even when such decisions impose additional costs on society” (Hand, Robinson, Creel 2013). Therapeutic relationships to produce better patient outcomes with overweight patients in our health care system needs much improvement. It is ethically wrong to blame an overweight person for their health conditions when a social and healthcare system is

AZARI, R and BERTAKIS, K, D (2006) The Influence of Obesity, Alcohol Abuse, and Smoking on Utilisation of Health Care Services. Family Medical - Health Services Research [Online] Vol. 38; No. 6; June 2006: Ph 427-434

As per Healthy People 2020 most Americans do not consume healthy diets and are not physically active at levels needed to maintain proper health. As a result of these behaviors the nation has experienced a dramatic increase in obesity in the U.S with 1 in 3 adults (34.0%) and 1 and 6 children and adolescents (16.2%) are obese. In addition to grave health consequences of being overweight and obese. It significantly raises medical cost and causes a great burden on the U.S medical care delivery system ("Healthy People 2020," 2014, p. 1).

According to Mason et al., chronic conditions are the number one cause of death in the United States (Mason et al., 2016 p. 275). These chronic illnesses include pulmonary disease, arthritis, kidney disease, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, neurological disease, alcoholism, mental health disorders, gastroenterology conditions, lupus, liver disease, cancers, and many more. While some conditions have uncontrollable risk factors such as age, genetics, gender, and race, society has a large contribution to these poor health conditions as well. Tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drug use, physical and emotional stress, lack of exercise, sleep deprivation, and poor dietary choices all increase the chance of developing a chronic illness.

The Healthy People 2020 organization is generates objectives that are science-based up to ten years to improve the health of Americans (). The Healthy People 2020 monitors the American’s health so that they can encourage collaboration amongst communities, inspire individuals to take action in their health decisions, and determine the results of prevention actions (). The overall goal of the Healthy People 2020 organization is, “attain high-quality, longer lives free of preventable disease, disability, injury, and premature death” (para. 5). The Healthy People 2020 website has several topics and objectives to gain knowledge of. Two of the topics that will be discussed are diabetes, heart disease and stroke, as well as each topics risk factors in relation to its objectives.

Within the last half century, the obesity rate in America has increased by twenty one percent from thirteen percent to thirty four percent of adults; while the percent of the population considered overweight has remained stagnate at thirty-four percent. Unfortunately, the increase in the obese population poses a large threat to the health and well-being of United States citizens. Obesity is not only an accumulation of fat mass, but has been linked to many diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. The strain that each of these respective diseases contributes onto the United States healthcare system is great, but how exactly does obesity contribute to the occurrence of these three diseases? What health factors are affected by obesity and lead to the development of chronic illness?

As previously determined, multiple risk factors contribute to a person developing cardiovascular disease. For further discussion, obesity will be the primary risk factor discussed due to the high obesity rate in the county I currently reside in. Guernsey County, Ohio, boasts an alarming high rate of residents who lack sufficient physical activity at 83.3%. This is an alarming finding but one that arguably contributes to the obesity rate of Guernsey County’s population at 30.2% which is just above the national percentage of 28.1% in America (city-data.com, 2014).

Primary care practitioners are at the forefront of teaching and giving patient’s tools in order to promote healthy habits. Educating, supporting and following up with patients in order to live a healthy lifestyle should be the focus of primary health. “The most effective interventions available to clinicians for reducing the incidence and severity of the leading causes of disease and disability in the United States are those that address patients’ personal health practices” (BRKHealthcare, p. 135). Incentives from insurance and government for preventative care is essential to change the current approach to medicine. Preventative health practices will lead to lower mortality and lower cost of care.

There are many serious health issues today in society. A few of them are anorexia nervosa, bulimia, diabetes, and obesity. Today, obesity is one of the most popular diseases around the world. Obesity typically means having a body mass index of thirty kilograms or more. If taken in more calories than burned, it leads to being overweight, and eventually obesity. Since the 1960s, people in the United States and other industrialized countries have become heavier on average. Excess weight is the cause of more illness than virtually any other medical condition. Most people still do not practice healthy behaviors that can prevent obesity. Obesity is mostly caused by poor eating habits. People do not eat healthy foods, have larger portions than