Obesity Preventing Childhood Obesity

Nina Davuluri of Syracuse, New York met with several dozen students at the Bell Elementary School in Tulsa, Oklahoma on June 6 to discuss her experiences with childhood obesity (Eger, 2014). This was particularly poignant because Miss Davuluri is the reigning Miss America. A steady diet of white rice, naan bread, soda, sugary cereals, and cookies during her childhood had led the family physician to warn her parents that Nina and her sister were borderline obese. Her parents responded appropriately and eliminated or restricted many of the offending foods and encouraged engagement in strenuous physical activity. Although this strategy was successful, Miss Davuluri relapsed in college and developed bulimia. Since then she has created a personalized approach to managing her diet, which helped her to lose close to 60 pounds shortly before the Miss America pageant.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2014) the prevalence of obese children and adolescents has doubled and quadrupled over the past 30 years. Currently, nearly one third of all children younger than 18 years of age in the United States are overweight or obese. Unfortunately, if these children are unable to return to normal weight they will suffer from an increased risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and cancer during adulthood. To better understand what roles a public health nurse can assume when combating the obesity epidemic in children, this essay will examine this health issue through the lens of prevention.

Roles of Public Health Nurses in Obesity...

54). A primary prevention strategy would involve taking steps to prevent the onset of disease. For childhood obesity this might involve educating families in the advantages of healthy diets and ample physical exercise (CDC, 2014). Secondary prevention identifies individuals in the early stages of the disease process before symptoms manifest (Turnock, 2012, p. 54) For children, this might involve tracking body mass index (BMI) over time and identifying those who may be overweight (Hoelscher, Kirk, Ritchie, Cunningham-Sabo, & Academy Positions Committee, 2013). An intervention could then be administered to halt and reverse this trend before obesity manifests. Tertiary prevention strategies are implemented after the individual has become symptomatic (Turnock, 2012, p. 54). The earliest symptoms a child may develop include hypertension and high cholesterol, but unless treated effectively the risk for diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and cancer persists from childhood into adulthood (CDC, 2014).
A community health nurse would have an integral role in primary prevention strategies for childhood obesity. The primary prevention strategies advocated by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (hereafter referred to as Academy) is a community-wide education campaign directed to all members of the public, including children and their parents (Hoelscher et al., 2013). A community health nurse could create literature and give seminars on this topic at local community centers and schools. The main…