Healthy Lifestyle Education Program for Children Report (Assessment)

Selected Program and Description of the Main Objectives

The health education program that I would select is the healthy lifestyle education. This education program comprises physical and nutritional components, which provide comprehensive knowledge and skills of healthy lifestyles. The increasing cases of obesity and overweight among children are due to poor diet and lack of physical activity. Therefore, the objective of the physical education is to enable children and families to understand the essence of physical activity in preventing and controlling chronic diseases such as obesity, heart diseases, and diabetes. The declining level of physical activity among Americans has made Healthy People 2020 to recommend everyone to increase activity to more than 150 minutes daily (Physical activity 2018). The objective of nutritional education is to empower parents and families to provide a healthy diet to their children and offer supportive social environments. According to Lloyd and Wyatt (2015), families play a central role in buttressing healthy lifestyles in their children for they determine food choices, meal structure, eating patterns, and physical activity, which are integral factors that influence overweight and obesity. Since education empowers people to live healthy lifestyles, it boosts the production of health and augments the stock of health among individuals. Therefore, the main objective of the healthy lifestyle education is to empower families and children to improve their health, prevent diseases, and avoid unhealthy lifestyles.

The Target Population of the Program

The target populations of the proposed healthy lifestyle program are overweight and obese children and their parents. The proportion of children with obesity and overweight has been increasing with time due to poor healthy lifestyles, such as sedentary lives and bad eating habits. Hence, this programs targets obese and overweight children aged between 5 and 15 years. Children in this age group need to understand knowledge and skills of managing their weights through physical activity and nutrition. Obesity and overweight is a handicap among children because they lessen self-esteem, diminish self-confidence, and decrease performance. Pop (2014) recommends the inclusion of physical education in the curriculum of children to help children with obesity and overweight to manage their conditions. Parents comprise the target population of the program for they play a significant role in helping children adopt healthy lifestyles. Fundamentally, parents dictate the nature of nutrition that their children get by choosing food, creating meal structure, and determining eating patterns. Additionally, parents have the capacity to influence the activity of children by discouraging sedentary lifestyles and inspiring physical activity. Thus, children and parents comprise appropriate target populations, which would enhance the effectiveness of the healthy lifestyle program in the management of obesity and overweight.

List of the Private and Social Benefits of the Program

Categories of Operating Expenses of the Program

Directs costs cover the hiring of experts, training materials, and stationery. The education program needs to hire physical therapists and nutritionists to train children and parents on how to use nutrition and physical activity in the management of weight and prevention of obesity and its chronic effects. Since it is an education program, physical therapists and nutritionists require training materials, such as brochures, charts, posters, and projectors. Moreover, they require classrooms where they can teach children and their parents without undue disturbance. As learners, parents and children need stationery to write notes and refer them in future in adopting healthy lifestyles. Indirect costs of the program are fields, gym equipment, physical activity gear, special diet, and time. To implement what they have learned in the program, parents and children require fields where they could do ample exercises. Moreover, gym equipment is necessary to enable children to undertake various types of physical activities. Parents have to purchase physical activity gear for their children so that they can exercise well. Nutrition is an important indirect cost for parents have to ensure that their children adhere to the recommended diet patterns. As the program aims to transform lifestyles, it requires a great deal of time for children have to exercise daily and parents ought to prepare healthy diets.

Most Important Reasons for the Increases in Healthcare Costs

Increasing wages is one of the significant reasons that have led to the increase in the cost of healthcare. Since health is an investment, healthy days are valuable for it enables one to live a quality life and generate optimum outputs. Moreover, wages determine the purchasing power of individuals. Hirschey (2016) explains that higher wages increase the purchasing power of individuals, enhance their access to quality, and increase the demand for health, resulting in increased cost of health care. In this view, improvement in the economic growth increases wages of citizens and enable them to afford quality healthcare services. Additionally, advancement in technology has increased medical inputs and extended prospects of attainable health. The use of advanced medical equipment and treatment regimens has increased health care costs because they are very expensive. Similarly, the application of advanced technology and treatment regimens have made it possible to treat chronic and incurable diseases, the demand for healthcare has increased. An increasing demand for healthcare increases its costs because due to the elasticity of the demand. Age is also another significant factor that increases costs of health care. Owing to the depreciation of health, aged people are prone to chronic diseases than young ones. Essentially, the health of individuals depreciates with age as healthy days decline and the cost of health production goes up.

Staff Members to Include in the Program

The program would include physical therapists and nutritionists as staff members. Physical therapists would teach children and their parents about the essence of physical activity, types of exercises, and ways of performing them on daily basis. As diet play a central role in the management of obesity and overweight, nutritionists would teach children and parents on how to prepare menu, structure meals, and adhere to healthy eating patterns. Other staff members are teachers for they provide instructional support and reinforcement of healthy lifestyles among children.

A Perfect Competitive Market

The labor market is an example of a perfectly competitive market as exhibited by various attributes. One attribute of a perfectly competitive market exhibited in the labor market is that both employers and employees are price takers. Employers set the price of job offers, while employees decide whether to accept or not, depending on their level of expertise in the labor market. Fundamentally, employers have no capacity to monopolize markets by setting prices and employing people as per their terms and conditions. Since the market is elastic, the supply and demand for labor are subject to wages. McEachern (2017) argues that employers who offer high wages attract more employees than employers who those who provide low wages. Another attribute is that there are no barriers in the labor market, which would enable employers to monopolize labor. Employers cannot restrict the movement of employees in the labor market using social, political, economic, and technological barriers. In essence, employees are at liberty to shift from one employer to another, according to their interests. Additionally, the labor market is extensive in that individual employers have no ability to set prices and monopolize labor. Since labor is identical, an employer can hire preferred employees and employees can work in favorable firms. Thus, the labor market exhibits a perfectly competitive market for employers and employees are price takers, there no barriers to entry, the market is extensively elastically, and labor is identical.

Prediction of Events in the Healthcare and Labor Markets

Demand and Supply in Healthcare Market

The problem that the study seeks to address determines the demand and supply of the healthy lifestyle education. The decline in cases of obesity and overweight, which are the problems the programs aim to address, would reduce the demand for the healthy lifestyle education. Health care system, parents, and schools would not require the program because children would have healthy lifestyles of managing and preventing obesity and overweight. In contrast, the supply of the services that the program offers would increase as the number of clients seeking them decrease.

In elastic market, the price is a factor that influences the supply and the demand for services that the program provides. The placement of high price ceiling on fees that participants pay to access the education program would reduce the demand for health care. Since the accessibility of healthcare services is dependent on price, high price ceiling would reduce the accessibility of the program due to unaffordability. Usually, a high price ceiling allows providers to set prices at a higher level than the market price. At higher prices, the demands declines are consumers of health care are unable to afford.

Competition is a factor that influences the supply and demand of healthcare services in the market. The increase in the number of the programs would decrease the demand for the healthy lifestyle program because competition for clients would increase. Each program would be competing for a limited number of clients who would not satisfy their capacity. In essence, the supply of the programs increases while the demand for the healthy lifestyle services would diminish.

Demand and Supply in Healthcare Market

A law imposes conditions on the labor market and changes the supply and demand of healthcare services. The demand for the program would increase when it complies with the legal requirement of hiring staff with masters’ degrees. Since physical therapists and nutritionists with masters’ degrees are few, it implies that number programs would be limited. Essentially, the supply of the program would low whereas the demand for the program would be high.

Changes in wages determine the supply and demand for healthcare services for they are subject to elastic forces of the market. Essentially, the decrease in wage rate would decrease the supply of healthcare services since the number of physical therapists and nutritionists would decline. Subsequently, the decrease in the number of personnel would increase the demand for the program because clients would be dependent on the limited supply of labor.

Demand and Supply in Labor Market

The nature of labor in the market determines the supply and demand for labor in perfectly competitive markets. The increase in the number of well-trained personnel would increase the supply and decrease the demand for labor in the labor market. Since the number of well-trained personnel is limited, increasing their number would enable the program get an adequate supply of labor. However, the demand for the personnel would decline because the program would be unable to serve additional clients.

Given that technologies improve efficiency and effectiveness in the labor market, they reduce the demand for labor. Evidently, technologies decrease the demand for labor for they increase the supply of labor in the market and offer cheaper services. In this view, the program would supplement labor with technologies and cause the demand for labor to decline. Technologies substitute human abort with mechanized labor, resulting in increased competition in the labor market.

Demand and Supply in Labor Market

The availability of labor in the labor market reduces the demand for labor but increase the supply of labor. As new graduates enter the labor market, their number increases the supply of labor but decrease the demand for the labor. New graduates cause the demand for their labor to decline as they increase the competition in the labor market.

Since employees operate in a perfect market where both the employer and employee are price takers, prices influence the supply and demand of labor. In this case, the decrease in wage rate of health personnel reduces the supply of labor and increases the demand for labor. Given that the labor market is elastic, a decrease in wages reduces the number of health personnel willing to work, but it stimulates the demand for labor, as the program would lack personnel willing to work. Therefore, the decline in wages reduces the supply of health personnel for the program.

Evaluation Method

Cost-utility analysis is the evaluation method that I would use in assessing the outcomes of the healthy lifestyle education. Leung (2016) asserts that cost-utility applies in cases where it is difficult to monetize outcomes of programs or interventions. Cost-utility analysis is an appropriate evaluation method because it allows qualitative and quantitative determination of outcomes of the program. The quality of life that children and families would live following their education provides an important outcome. As the objective of the program is to empower children and families to manage obesity and overweight and prevent the occurrence of chronic diseases, the improvement in health and the reduction of diseases are critical outcomes. Moreover, the number of children and families who utilize the program would indicate the quantitative outcome.

References

Hirschey, M. (2016). Managerial economics. New York, NY: Cengage Learning.

Leung, L. (2016). Health economic evaluation: A primer for healthcare professionals. Primary Health Care, 6(2), 1-8. Web.

Lloyd, J., & Wyatt, K. (2015). The healthy lifestyles program (HeLP): An overview of and recommendations arising from the conceptualization and development of an innovative approach to promoting healthy lifestyles for children and their families. International Journal ofEnvironmental Research and Public Health, 12(1), 1003-1019. Web.

McEachern, A. (2017). Contemporary economics (4^th ed.). New York, NY: Cengage Learning.

Physical activity. (2018). Web.

Pop, C. (2014). Physical activities for overweight and obese children: An inclusive approach. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 16(1), 142-147. Web.