Aggregate, Community and Christoffel\'s Framework

Childhood Obesity

The author of this report is asked to report on several aspects and dimensions of a certain aggregate, with the aggregate chosen being childhood obesity. The community itself will be summarized as well as the difference between the aggregate itself and the community. The identification and description of the aggregate will be offered. The three stages of Christoffel's conceptual framework will be listed and described. An action plan regarding the aggregate will be listed with four current scholarly and current references to back up the same. While general and childhood obesity figures are on their way down, much work needs to be done and the children of poor Americans still remain particularly vulnerable.

Analysis

As noted in the introduction, the aggregate being analyzed and described in this report is childhood obesity. While the two terms are fairly similar, they do not mean the same thing. An aggregate relating to childhood obesity would be the larger overall group of children that are obese. A community relative to childhood obesity would the children in that group that are of poorer families in particular, just as one example. Another example of community would be obese children that are of a certain race or gender. In short, one is the whole and one is a part of the whole. To further identify and fetter out the aggregate overall, the childhood obesity aggregate would be the sum of all children that are obese irrespective of gender, race, position in America, class in America, why a child is obese (such as genetics or bad eating habits) and so forth.

As for Christoffel's three stages, as first mentioned in the introduction, those three stages are information, strategy and action. When speaking of the three stages, one has to summarize and view the overall information relative to an aggregate to as to show the sum of its parts and the different moving sections of the aggregate. As noted before as example, there are children that are obese because of bad eating habits as taught (or not taught) by the parents and there are also children that are obese because of genetic issues such as thyroid problems and the like. The second stage as offered by Christoffel is to mold and shape a strategy relative to the aggregate and the different things that are causing that aggregate to exist. Using the same two examples as before, a strategy to educate and train parents and kids would typically be used to address children who simply do not do or know better while medical interventions such as hormone replacement/remediation therapy can be used for those that have a chemical imbalance issue. The final stage of the Christoffel is to actually implement and execute the plan that is put together in the strategy step (Christoffel, 2000).

As for the overall action plan relating to the aggregate, the words offered so far give a basic idea of the two overall causes of childhood obesity, but there is a little more complexity than already offered. While health issues and lack of education are two of the major issues involved in childhood obesity, the other major issue is money and resources and this pertains both to the money/resources available to governments, schools and other agencies/people that assist in combating obesity as well as the money and resources available to parents in their fight to keep their child healthy and/or to combat the ignorance or ambivalence towards what is causing their child to be obese and/or what can and will go terribly wrong if a child grows up obese rather than healthy and active. Relative to money, one major issue is that foods that are processed, calorie-rich, fat-rich and otherwise unhealthy tend to be much more ubiquitous and heavily marketed than foods that are healthy good for children to eat (Feldscher, 2013).

To that end, parents can be helped by education relative to what cost-efficient items exist and how/why it is so important to push those options onto their children. Instilling good habits and values relative to eating well and remaining active is a huge part of keeping a child healthy and eating well. Schools can play a huge part in whether a child eats well as children almost eat lunch at school and breakfast is offered as well a lot of the time (Rabin, 2011). Parents can and should take advantage of the balanced meals a school can offer and schools/governments can assist the parents if money and resources are an issue. Many schools offered reduced and/or free lunches and the eligibility for these meals are often directly linked to income levels. These reduced-price or free meals can be offered while delivering a high level of discretion so as not to stigmatize children due to the fact that their lunches (or other meals) are entirely or solely subsidized by taxpayer money. The recent spate of meals being denied (or even discarded) to the children of parents who cannot or will not pay for the meals as they are required to is a huge black eye to schools and the parents should be dealt with directly in such a case because it is not the child's responsibility or fault if the parents are not paying their end of the bill (Durando, 2014). It is more important to have the child eat and eat responsibility rather than saving a few bucks here and there.