Population Health: Childhood Obesity of All of Essay

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Population Health: Childhood Obesity

Of all of the current factors impacting population health, childhood obesity may be have the greatest threat for long-term damage, as well as being the one most highly linked to culture, socioeconomic status, and personal liberties. As a result, efforts to reduce childhood obesity have been met with ambivalence and, sometimes even hostility. Part of the reason for this hostility is that the two factors that contribute greatly to childhood obesity, junk food and a lack of exercise seem ubiquitous in modern society. It can be difficult for parents to avoid junk food, and, for those parents whose children do not struggle with weight issues, it can see unduly burdensome for them to have to avoid junk food (such as not taking birthday cupcakes to elementary school children) to cater to the health problems of other people's children. Likewise, it can be difficult for some to understand why children are so inactive, but unsafe neighborhoods and working parents can make it difficult for children to get exercise outside of a school setting.

Looking at childhood obesity through the lens of an epidemiologist, it is clear that tackling childhood obesity presents several challenges. The three most important issues related to the public health initiative are: the ethics of establishing weight guidelines, legal limits on food sizes or content, and regulating parenting choices that can contribute to obesity. The obesity and overweight epidemic is evident when one looks at today's children, but visual cues are not enough to document a health issue.

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Currently, health care practitioners use the BMI as a guide for overweight and obesity-related health issues. However, it is well-accepted among practitioners that BMI is, at best, an approximation for healthy weight and that some outliers in children will be overweight or obese according the BMI, but not overfat according to more accurate measures of body fat percentage. "Experts generally consider BMI for kids to be a good measure of body fat, at least among heavier children. But there are some cases in which BMI might be misleading. Athletic kids, in particular, may fall into the overweight category when they are actually muscular" (Benaroch, 2103). As a result, some people question whether it is ethical to use the BMI as a measure of obesity. When considered as a screening tool, BMI can be very helpful when identifying children with potential health problems, but it should not be considered a stand-alone diagnostic tool. One of the legal issues surrounding obesity is the regulation of high-calorie foods. For example, New York City had banned the sale of soft drinks above a certain size, but this ban was declared unconstitutional (Ax, 2013). Finally, because childhood obesity is epidemic and can have life-long health consequences for the impacted children, some have suggested that allowing a child to be morbidly obese is a form of child abuse. In fact, there have been cases where severely obese children have been removed from their parents. This is an interesting regulatory issue, because it….....

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