Implementation Plan
One of the solutions to the problem of childhood obesity is the proposed plan which is aimed at increasing community awareness regarding the problem, encouraging the members of the community to participate in the plan, as well as support it. This can be done by increasing the working team by hiring more experienced employees. In addition, it is important to have reliable communication links when making the working groups. In order to have commitments from organizations representing every part of the working group, it is important to implement the recommended strategies like identifying “champions” in each group. It is important to use communication tools that advocate for the proposed solutions. The proposed solutions are bound to bring great advancement to the community. These communication tools should focus on healthy diets for everyone in the society (Koplan, 2007).
Next on the plan is ensuring that children have a healthy start in their lifestyle by means of useful prenatal care and through the support from their parents, which is necessary when breastfeeding (Bryson, 2011). The quality childcare set by the parents helps with the provision of a balanced diet and spacious opportunities for children to be physically active. Furthermore, it is necessary to educate parents and caregivers by providing them with simple handouts which encircle nutritional choices based on the latest Dietary Guidelines. One of the solutions is the improved labels on food and menus that provide clear information on the ingredients of the products to help parents make healthy choices for their children. There should be a reduction in the marketing of unhealthy products for children. This will take a long way to enforce the proposed solutions.
Schools and professionals in nutrition should work hand in hand in order to effectively control obesity in children. Children at schools should identify a volunteer nutritional professional and work together to improve the nutritional behavior of other children. This in return helps the school in implementing the proposed solutions. The Matched schools and nutrition professionals have access to the necessary resources, support from the government, parents and technical assistance, which foster prolific partnerships (Koplan, 2007).
Schroeder (1991) argues that surveillance might be significant when implementing community-based proposals. This may include the intervention of the social workers who are available all the time. They will constantly be with the families and the children in their normal home setting, and this will remind them about the proper diet that they may have ignored. The social workers will also make sure that the numerous activities are put in place for the children to participate in, and the center’s function and the children enroll in the activities. The social workers will look for other possible factors that may be working against the proposed solutions in the community.
The parents are encouraged to have a checklist to enable them to analyze the progress of their activities with the children. The parents or caregivers are requested to check on the kind of meals they give to their children on a daily basis. The number of times they let the children have unhealthy foods and the type of food eaten is considered as well. Recording the hours that the children watch television is also important and should be included in the checklist. This will help in the progressive assessment of the proposed solutions and checking on their practicability.
Evaluation Plan
The proposed plans are set to give various outcomes that are bound to show a sustainable reduction in the number of children with obesity. Such plans will ensure that children reduce their weight considerably, but for most of them, it will depend on the rate of their body metabolism. Different children will lose weight at different paces due to various factors such as the rate of metabolism (Koplan, 2007).
The children vary in age, and to this effect, they may not be of the same grade at school. Consequently, they will not leave school at the same time and this means that the time each child has to participate in the activities varies. Those that participate in activities more will lose more weight than those who are in school for learning only.
The number of hours children spend watching television also matters as they reduce consumption of unhealthy snacks during the TV sessions. The reduction in unhealthy snacks consumption results in the loss of weight, which may be significant to some children and negligible to others. This is because other children consume more snacks than others do when watching television.
The other outcome of the proposed plans is that the children should take up the initiative of their well-being. This assists them in making decisions on the kind of food to eat or the number of snacks to have every day. Children also take it up upon themselves to remind their parents to take them to participate in various activities at specified centers.
We use various methods to gather data on the outcomes such as direct interviewing, which requires the social workers to go to the neighborhood. The social workers will enquire from the children in the programs whether the activities at the centers are fun and engaging. The nutritionists working with the students at school can interview the catering staff on the various hurdles they may be facing when preparing healthy dishes for the students. The nutritionists interview the teachers about the change in behavior of the students since the implementation of the plans.
According to Marlow (2011), the use of questionnaires is another way of gathering information on the outcome of the proposed solutions, where the questions to be asked are prepared in advance. This is the most favorable method to gather information as it protects the discretion of the individuals and a record is kept for future reference. The questionnaires are passed to the parents or caregivers for them to give genuine feedback on the progress of the program. They fill out the number of hours the television is on during the week, the number of times they have cooked a healthy meal in a week and the activities that they have initiated as a family.
The questionnaires are in form of printed papers and others are online. The paper questionnaires go together with selected direct interviews. This is where the interviewer uses a questionnaire to record answers given by the interviewee. However, online questionnaires are preferable because they are less detailed and have a direct record to the database hence saving the time used to analyze and present the results (Marlow, 2011).
References
Bryson, J. (2011). Strategic planning for public and nonprofit organizations. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Koplan, J. (2007). Progress in preventing childhood obesity: How do we measure up? Washington: National Academy of Science.
Marlow, C. (2011). Research methods for generalist social work. Belmont: Cengage Learning.
Schroeder, P. (1991). Monitoring and evaluation in nursing. Gaithersburg: Aspen Publishers.