Fighting Childhood Obesity

Obesity Reduction and Public Health Policies Proposed Public Health Policy Although the problem of obesity is complex, it is well-established that a lack of physical activity contributes to obesity. Furthermore, children who do not get enough physical activity may be more likely to grow into healthy adults. Despite this, many children do not have a regular physical education class, and, depending on their neighborhood surroundings may not have safe opportunities for physical play.

The proposed public health policy would be to fund supervised play in gyms in public schools for thirty minutes prior to the beginning of school and one hour after the end of school on every school day. The goal of the policy is to ensure that all children have access to safe, supervised exercise facilities on a daily basis. This access would be made available twice daily, because some family schedules may allow for time after school, while others may only have time prior to school.

This would remove one obstacle towards health that many children in impoverished neighborhoods face: the lack of available safe space for physical activities. Furthermore, it would also remove another obstacle that many children in all areas face: the lack of adult supervision before or after school, which discourages those parents who cannot supervise their children at those time periods from allowing their children to play in public areas. Supporting Evidence Currently, many children lack the opportunity for safe and structured physical activity.

"A little more than half of students nationwide are enrolled in a physical education class, and by high school only a third take gym class daily" (Sealey, 2013). Moreover, children are frequently unable to engage in physical activity outside of school; "if playgrounds are unsafe, parents will not let their kids play there" (Isaacs & Swartz, 2010).

The lack of adult supervision in an enclosed, safe space means that many children who are unsupervised by an adult after school are sedentary because of a lack of choices; an opportunity to play in a safe environment with friends from school may increase physical activity, rather than increasing sedentary lifestyle choices and the snacking behavior which frequently accompanies them.

Achieving the Goal The policy is to be achieved by providing federal subsidies to public schools to pay existing teaching staff additional monies to supervise open-play in their existing gym or outdoor facilities. These subsidies would be available as grants through federal public health branches, such as the Centers for Disease Control, and would be operated independently from public education funding. Who Benefits On the surface of the policy, it is clear that the children who utilize the facilities would benefit.

However, because obesity is a complex problem that impacts the entire community, if the program helped reduce obesity rates among children, it could have a ripple impact that benefitted the entire community through lower mortality rates and lower healthcare costs as the population ages. In other words, if the policy is successful in encouraging even a small number of children who are currently at-risk of becoming obese or are already obese to become more physically active, the entire community could feel the positive impacts of the policy.

Cost Effectiveness The cost effectiveness of the program is difficult to calculate because the rates of utilization and the impact of that utilization on lifelong healthcare costs per individual are not yet understood. The additional cost for teacher pay could be calculated like it would for a club or existing sport, increasing salaries by approximately $3,000/year at each school.

However, without being able to accurately project long-term health-care costs, a pilot program would have to be followed long-term to study the overall cost-effectiveness, but the dangers of waiting to implement the program outweigh the benefits of a pilot study. Acceptance One of the major barriers to implementing any obesity-control program is that the Obamas have been advocates for reducing childhood obesity and there is a high level of dislike for the Obamas among a sub-culture of American society.

The likelihood that they will accept the program is low, however, because it is not a mandatory program, but simply a voluntary program, lack.