Obesity is a severe chronic condition that significantly affects the quality of life of individuals and families in the United States by decreasing productivity and increasing the expense of medical treatment. According to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), the prevalence of obesity among adults has risen from 30.5% to 42.4% over the past three decades. The prevalence of severe obesity has risen from 4.7% to 9.2% during the same time frame (Venegas & Mehrzad, 2020). Similarly, the number of obese children and adolescents is on the rise, and currently, over 73.6% of the U.S. population is overweight or obese or both (Venegas & Mehrzad, 2020). Fast food’s high trans-fat and calorie density have been highlighted as the most critical contributor to the obesity epidemic
Children who are obese or overweight consume large amounts of sugary and fatty foods and do not play or run around as much as they should. Children are unable to fend for themselves because they lack the resources necessary to do so. Parents influence their children’s levels of physical activity and lifestyle choices. For instance, they will determine whether a child will play outside or stay inside and engage in sedentary activities such as watching television or using electronic devices.
Proposed Evidence-Based Intervention
Treating obesity once it has formed and preventing children from accumulating additional weight in the first place are the two most important treatments for reducing the prevalence of obesity in children as a whole. Numerous studies have established the effectiveness of treatments employing either of these two approaches. A meta-analysis of research involving teenagers and bariatric surgery finds that, on average, patients who undergo this treatment experience a decrease in body mass index (BMI) of 13.5 kg/m 2. 5 Some nonsurgical interventions for the treatment of childhood obesity are effective (Carbone et al., 2019). However, effect sizes are small compared to the high BMIs of the children before the intervention, six and treatments may reach too few children to have a significant effect on the population as a whole
Parents need to increase physical activity and involve the entire family in fostering healthy lifestyle changes. Begin to manage weight gradually by minimizing the amount of time one spends in front of a computer, developing a dietary plan, and ensuring one gets at least one hour of exercise and play per day. Include additional members of the child’s healthcare team to manage the child’s weight. Parents are encouraged to alter the environment of their households (PfeifflĂ© et al., 2019). Those obese children who have not responded satisfactorily to previous therapies are subjected to more extreme procedures. These adjustments should include initiatives to reduce energy consumption, promote physical activity, limit sedentary activities, facilitate family participation, and modify eating and physical activity behaviors.
Comparison of the Intervention to Previous Researches
Various academics have developed recommendations and intervention programs to ensure that children grow up healthy and do not become overweight or obese. This finding is echoed by Carbone et al. (2019), who suggest various benefits of physical activities in preventing diseases. The research that was conducted by Natale and colleagues (2017) recommended that improved nutrition and increased physical activities be implemented among children in order to control obesity among young teenagers. Previous studies showed that they were effective in managing overweight. As a result, it is necessary to implement this intervention program of physical exercise and to check the diet among the children of Miami in order to reduce the occurrence and incidence of obesity in the city’s youth.
Expected Outcome for the Intervention
Children considered overweight or obese are subjected to a great deal of discrimination in today’s society. Consequently, they have a low sense of self-worth and shy away from interacting with other children their age. In addition to the difficulties, they face in social settings, they are more likely to develop potentially life-threatening medical conditions, such as diabetes and hypertension, if their conditions are not properly managed (PfeifflĂ© et al., 2019). Because of the potential for the diseases to result in high management and treatment costs, the children of Miami must maintain healthy lifestyles to reduce the likelihood that they will contract any of these conditions.
The proposed intervention program that seeks to encourage children to participate in various types of physical activities will bring about a variety of beneficial effects for the children of Miami. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle by participating in a variety of physical activities guarantees that the body is active and, as a result, that all of its systems will function normally and efficiently (Pfeifflé et al., 2019). In addition, the children will have confidence due to their normal weight, and they will have an easier time interacting with other children their age.
It is crucial to determine the relationships between two variables and assess the effects of various interventions, such as medical intervention and parent education, on children’s BMI. Since it is essential to discover these relationships, the optimal research design in this situation is experimental. However, in this instance, researchers will be in charge of allocating interventions or treatments, and this aspect of the quasi-experiment is pertinent to the subject at hand. In this case, regulation is crucial because participants will be divided into groups based on the initial selection process and whether or not they meet the criteria. Except for the possibility of bias, this research design is the most suitable because it will facilitate monitoring the long-term experiment with the utmost regard for patient safety. This “quasi-experiment” will entail measuring the results of two groups, keeping track of any progress or reduction in BMI, and monitoring the situation.
The Period of Implementing the Intervention and Evaluating the Outcome
The proposed research is expected to take approximately eight months. Children from Miami County will be the focus of attention throughout this period; they will be selected for participation in the study within the first three weeks. The proposed intervention program will be carried out for five months. During this time, an all-encompassing education program will be implemented across the county, emphasizing the subjects to ensure that they adhere to the prescribed curriculum. After the conclusion of this time frame, information on the participants will be gathered from them through questionnaires. The information will then be analyzed during the remaining time frame to establish the intervention program’s success. Parents involved in BMI education will be required to ensure they carry out activities that help in reducing children obesity such as encouraging healthy lifestyles in their households.
Nursing Science, Socioeconomic Health Determinants, Epidemiologic, Genomic, and Genetic Evidence Support Childhood Obesity Intervention
Nursing science is an essential component in the process of formulating a wide range of intervention methods, which are implemented with the goal of maintaining a healthy population. In order for the program to be successful, it will be essential, among other things, to identify the social variables that lead to childhood obesity and overweight in Miami, as well as to gather the data and information that will be required. The genomic and genetic data collected from the study group will be analyzed in order to uncover any anomalies that may exist within the group and to determine whether or not cases of obesity and overweight are the result of genetic mutation errors or whether they are passed down via families (Tylavsky et al., 2019). As a result of this, the profession of nursing will play an essential role in analyzing research methodologies for the purpose of enhancing clinical care, furthering efforts to prevent obesity and overweight, and determining whether or not an intervention program such as the one described above is effective.
References
Carbone, S., Del Buono, M. G., Ozemek, C., & Lavie, C. J. (2019). Obesity, risk of diabetes and role of physical activity, exercise training and cardiorespiratory fitness. Progress in cardiovascular diseases, 62(4), 327-333.
Natale, R. R., Camejo, S. T., Asfour, L., Uhlhorn, S. B., Delamater, A., & Messiah, S. E. (2017). Promoting healthy weight among children with developmental delays.Journal of Early Intervention, 39(1), 51-65.
Pfeifflé, S., Pellegrino, F., Kruseman, M., Pijollet, C., Volery, M., Soguel, L., & Torre, S. B. (2019). Current recommendations for nutritional management of overweight and obesity in children and adolescents: A structured framework. Nutrients, 11(2), 362.
Tylavsky, F. A., Ferrara, A., Catellier, D. J., Oken, E., Li, X., Law, A., Dabelea, D., Rundle, A., Gilbert-Diamond, D., Hivert, M.-F., Breton, C. V., Cassidy-Bushrow, A. E., Mueller, N. T., Hunt, K. J., Arteaga, S. S., Lombo, T., Mahabir, S., Ruden, D., Sauder, K., … Trasande, L. (2019). Understanding childhood obesity in the US: The NIH environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program. International Journal of Obesity, 44(3), 617–627.
Venegas, O., & Mehrzad, R. (2020). Prevalence and trends in obesity in the United States and affluent countries.Obesity, 19–41.
Appendix
Miami-Dade County, Florida, is tackling obesity throughout the community, which is home to nearly 2.5 million residents. The rate of obesity and overweight adults in the county is 67.4%. Approximately 13% of high-school students are obese and only 12% attend daily physical-education classes at school, which is lower than the state rate of 44%. Poor diet and physical inactivity contribute to the obesity problem. Only 22.1% of adults in the county meet the Federal government’s guidelines for fruit and vegetable consumption, and 24.5% of the adult population reported no physical activity in the last 30 days. www.dadehealth.org
PICOT Question
In overweight and obese children in Miami Dade county (P), does providing parental education (I), compared to providing no parental education (C) lead to a decrease in the child’s weight of 10% or more (O) in 8 months(T)?