Health advocacy takes into account direct service to a person or household as a whole in addition to activities that facilitate the promotion of health and accessibility to health care amongst communities and the greater general public. Joining together science, ethics and politics, advocacy is self-instigated, evidence-based, deliberate action that health professionals can assume and undertake to aid in the transformation of systems and improve the environments and policies that fashion their patients’ behaviours and choices, and at the end of the day their health. It helps in guaranteeing access to care, directing the system, mobilization of resources, addressing health disparities, influencing health policy and generating system change (Hubinette et al., 2017). Provision 7 of the ANA Code of Ethics states that nurses, in all of their medical roles and settings, bring about the advancement of the profession. This is through research, scholarly analysis, and professional standards development, and the creation of both nursing and health policy. Provision 8 of the ANA Code of Ethics asserts that the nurse works in tandem with other health professionals and the general public to safeguard human rights, facilitate promotion of health diplomacy and reduction of health disparities. Provision 9 of the ANA Code of Ethics asserts that the nursing profession, collectively through its professional entities, must communicate nursing values, sustaining the integrity of the profession and assimilate principles of social justice into nursing and health policy (American Nurses Association, 2016). The main objective of this paper is to develop a health advocacy campaign regarding obesity and hypertension amongst adults in the state of West Virginia.
Population Health Issue: Hypertension and Obesity
Obesity is a mounting global health concern, with a fast-pace increased being perceived in morbid obesity. Imperatively, obesity is linked to a heightened cardiovascular risk and initial inception of cardiovascular morbidity. The escalating obesity endemic is a major source of unsustainable health expenses and morbidity as well as mortality owing to hypertension, type 2 diabetes mellitus, dyslipidemia, particular cancers and severe cardiovascular illnesses. Chriqui (2013) asserts that if the current trends in obesity continue to prevail, it is expected that annual medical expenses attributable to the medical condition could increase by approximately $48 to $66 billion for each year by 2030. Akin to obesity, hypertension is a major disparaging health metric that has adverse health consequences. Notably, at the present moment, hypertension is the prevalent contributing factor to global disease encumbrance, and the direct and indirect costs incurred in the treatment of hypertension are exponentially greater (Leggio et al., 2017). Obesity and hypertension are closely associated. Statistics indicate that there are approximately 58 million to 65 million adults suffering from hypertension in the United States. In addition, the proportion of individuals with obesity in the United States is rising. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) statistics show that globally there are 2.3 billion adults that are overweight and more than 700 million are suffering from obesity (Jiang et al., 2016).
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In accordance to Chriqui (2013), obesity is an intricate issue necessitated large-scale, population-centered solutions. It has been ascertained that public policy approaches are pivotal implements in obesity prevention and reduction endeavors as they can be beneficial for all parties that are involved instead of basically altering the behaviors of one person at a time. Progressively more, the public health community is advocating for a systems-based method to obesity preclusion that distinguishes the policy, environmental, and individual level factors that impact behavior and outcomes.
Target Population: Obesity and Adults in West Virginia
The rates of obesity and overweightness amongst children and adults in the United States have risen more than threefold in the past 30 years. West Virginia has a population of more than 1.8 million people. In accordance to data from a recent survey conducted by Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, the rate of obesity amongst adults in the United States presently surpasses 35 percent in 7 states, 30 percent in 29 different states and 25 percent in 48 states. Specifically, at the present moment, the state of West Virginia has the greatest rate of obesity in the nation at 38.1 percent (State of Obesity, 2018).
Health Advocacy Campaign Plan
Overweight is delineated as having a Body Mass Index (BMI), or weight-to-height ratio, that is higher than or equivalent to 25 and lower than 30, whereas obesity is delineated as having a BMI equal to or greater than 30. 13 percent of the global number of overweight and obese people resides in the United States. Approximately, 160 million Americans are either experiencing problems with being overweight or obese. Just about 75 percent of males in and more than 60 percent of females in the United States are obese or overweight. This has become a prevalent issue in the nation as just about 30 percent of girls and boys below 20 years of age are either overweight or obese (Murray, Ng, and Mokdad, 2018). In the United States, the highest pervasiveness of obesity and overweight was established among men between ages 50 to 54, signifying 80 percent and women between ages 60 to 64, signifying 73 percent. Amongst Americans below the age of 20 years, the highest pervasiveness in being overweight or obese was established amongst children ages 10 to 14, with boys at 38 percent and girls at 37 percent (Murray et al., 2018).
The obesity pervasiveness in West Virginia has been incessantly greater as compared to that of the United States in its entirety since state-level checking started via the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control’s (CDC) Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). Notably, in the year 1990, the West Virginia rate of adult obesity was 15 percent as compared to a national rate of 11.6 percent. A decade later, the.....
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