Community health nursing: journal research article review

Nursing Journal

Community Health and Latino Childhood Obesity

Childhood obesity is increasingly one of the most pressing, foreboding and costly health issues impacting the United States today. This is often shown to be the result of familial, cultural and educational context, with children being highly impacted in their relationship to exercise and nutrition by the orientation of their parents, their communities and their schools. Moreover, some ethnic groups are impacted with greater severity than are others, due to what researchers in the present article perceive to be a converge of cultural, socioeconomic and familial habits. This is the premise at the center of the research by Arredondo et al. (2010) which reports on the relationship between obesity in Latino children and their parents.

Summary:

Accordingly, the article puts forth the proposition that community health initiatives aimed at preventing and treating childhood obesity in Latino communities should be channeled through a partnership between schools and parents. The article makes the argument that the child's weight status is typically linked to his or her parents' weight status. Further, the child's weight status is likely to be impacted by the parents' attitude toward exercise, their approach to promoting proper dietary behaviors and their own ability to evaluate their general health circumstances. The result is a study which produces the conclusion that some level of school-based intervention could significantly improve health prospects for Latino children and, by consequence, help to bring greater health knowledge and habits to Latino families and communities.

Validity, Strengths, Weaknesses:

The study lacks scientific validity. According to the article by Arredondo et al., no validity testing was done to assure the empirical fortitude of the study. Instead, a variety of methods were used to collect data. Among them, survey questionnaires and face-to-face interviews would be used to gain insight into the health behaviors that appeared to predicate obesity or health weight status. While this would be sufficient in drawing a conceptual profile of the health outlook for children and their parents in a sample Latino community, the study would not be designed with a set of empirical conclusions as its intended deliverable. Instead, the study proposes to provide a basis for the design of its intervention program.

Beyond the absence of any validity testing either for the study or the survey instrument used to gather primary data, a notable weakness of the study would be its incapacity to distinguish between sociological and biological factors in conceptualizing the health risks particular to Latino children. The researchers concede this point, remarking that while parental weight was most certainly shown to be directly correlated to the weight status of their children, it was unclear to what proportion the cultural context and the genetic predisposition of the family played into this correlation. As a result, it becomes more difficult to ascertain exactly what mode of intervention would best be suited for helping children overcome health matters that are at least to some degree beyond their control.

That said, a defining strength of the research is its chosen method of intervention. The perspective that the health of the children at the center of this study cannot be improved without effectively improving the health habits of their respective families is a centering position and one that endows the study with a significant value to the public health. As the study finds in its conclusion, "social and structural environments in which Hispanic children are reared may play an important role in determining their risk for obesity and related behaviors." (Arredondo et al., p. 30) Even lacking any empirical validity and lacking the capacity to be replicated, it does offer an array of correlations that can provide focus for intervention.

Recommendation:

The flexibility of this study appears appropriate given the need to provide an intervention approach that is intuitive to the particular needs of each child and his or her family. This underscores the primary recommendation that intervention be conducted with the active participation of the school in question, with the channels of the school being exploited to gain participation of parents and the support of public health and public administration officials. By connecting healthy lunch initiatives, refined physical education programs and nutrition education in school with healthy breakfast initiatives, family dinner initiatives, family exercise initiatives and nutrition education outreach to parents, intervening parties stand a greater chance of shifting health behaviors both community wide and for future generations.