Understanding the Impact of Obesity on Public Health

Obesity is a public health concern because it is highly prevalent in wide number of people of all ages and impacts reduction of the quality of life of the individuals leading them to face poor health outcomes and death (Wharton et al., 2020). This is evident as obesity causes increased deposition of fat in the body which raises chances of facing comorbidities like heart disease, diabetes, cancer and others which leads to deteriorate the health of the individual and make them face mortality (Inoue et al., 2018).

Health Belief Model (HBM) can be implemented as health behaviour theory to improve the condition and prevalence regarding obesity. This is because HBM mentions the way messages regarding enhanced health behaviour and behaviour change required for reducing the prevalence of any health issues are to be delivered to target population so that they actively participate in the process and make changes in behaviour (McArthur et al., 2018). HBM informs that to make changes in behaviour for health issues people are to be made to understand their susceptibility of facing the health issue and severity to be faced for their health due to the health problem (Luquis and Kensinger, 2019). Moreover, benefits of the behaviour change for their health, barriers to be avoided to make the change, cues of actions to be considered, modifying variables to be focussed and way self-efficiency is to be achieved are also informed through use of HBM to successfully make behaviour change required for controlling any health issue (Dumitrescu and Iacob, 2021). Thus, HBM is to be used in making the changes in behaviour and lifestyle required by individuals suffering from obesity to make them ensure enhanced well-being and good health conditions.

The barriers to behaviour change required for people affected by obesity are as follows:

Lifestyle condition which involves less time and opportunity to exercise (Wadden et al., 2020)

Culture that supports increased intake of unhealthy foods (Caterson et al., 2019)

Lack of education regarding the health consequence of obesity and way to prevent it (Wadden et al., 2020)

The existing national policies or strategies present regarding obesity management are:

Change4Life (NHS, 2018)

Healthy Lives, Healthy People: A Cross Governmental Strategy for England (assets.publishing.service.gov.uk, 2010)

Better Health Campaign (NHS, 2019)

The issues regarding obesity is relevant to the nursing practise because in adult nursing, obesity among adults is one of the major health issues required to be controlled by nurses to promote the health and well-being of individuals (Choudhry et al., 2017). Moreover, in adult nursing, the nurses are intricately involved in delivering person-centred care to obese individual by arranging guidance regarding nutritional intake, nature of exercise to be performed, weight management program to be engaged by them and others (Kelly and Wills, 2018). Thus, it can be seen that nurses are intricately involved in creating care strategies for obese individuals which makes it considered a key health issue that is highly focused and is relevant in nursing practice. Obesity is also relevant to nursing practice as it is one of the issues to be effectively controlled by the nurses through enhanced monitoring and management of patients so that its chronic impact on the people can be prevented. This is required to avoid the NHS spend increased money annually to control the increased prevalence of the disease (Cai et al., 2019).

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References

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk 2010, Healthy Lives, Healthy People: A Cross Governmental Strategy for England, Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/216096/dh_127424.pdf [Accessed on: 20 July 2021]

Cai, S., Wang, S., Mukamel, D.B., Caprio, T. and Temkin-Greener, H., 2019. Hospital readmissions among post-acute nursing home residents: Does obesity matter?. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, 20(10), pp.1274-1279.

Caterson, I.D., Alfadda, A.A., Auerbach, P., Coutinho, W., Cuevas, A., Dicker, D., Hughes, C., Iwabu, M., Kang, J.H., Nawar, R. and Reynoso, R., 2019. Gaps to bridge: misalignment between perception, reality and actions in obesity. Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, 21(8), pp.1914-1924.

Choudhry, K., Armstrong, D. and Dregan, A., 2017. Nurses’ perceptions of weight gain and obesity in the prison environment. Journal of Correctional Health Care, 23(2), pp.173-183.

Dumitrescu, C. and Iacob, C.I., 2021. Predicting Healthy Eating: Conscientiousness versus the Health Belief Model. Romanian Journal of Applied Psychology, 23(1), pp.18-24.

Inoue, Y., Qin, B., Poti, J., Sokol, R. and Gordon-Larsen, P., 2018. Epidemiology of obesity in adults: latest trends. Current obesity reports, 7(4), pp.276-288.

Kelly, M. and Wills, J., 2018. Systematic review: What works to address obesity in nurses?. Occupational Medicine, 68(4), pp.228-238.

Luquis, R.R. and Kensinger, W.S., 2019. Applying the health belief model to assess prevention services among young adults. International Journal of Health Promotion and Education, 57(1), pp.37-47.

McArthur, L.H., Riggs, A., Uribe, F. and Spaulding, T.J., 2018. Health belief model offers opportunities for designing weight management interventions for college students. Journal of nutrition education and behavior, 50(5), pp.485-493.

NHS 2018, Change4Life, Available at: https://www.nhs.uk/change4life/about-change4life [Accessed on: 20 July 2021]

NHS 2019, Better Health Campaign, Available at: https://www.nhs.uk/better-health/ [Accessed on: 20 July 2021]

Wadden, T.A., Tronieri, J.S. and Butryn, M.L., 2020. Lifestyle modification approaches for the treatment of obesity in adults. American Psychologist, 75(2), p.235.

Wharton, S., Lau, D.C., Vallis, M., Sharma, A.M., Biertho, L., Campbell-Scherer, D., Adamo, K., Alberga, A., Bell, R., Boulé, N. and Boyling, E., 2020. Obesity in adults: a clinical practice guideline. Cmaj, 192(31), pp.E875-E891.