¶ … Hering, Pritsker, Gonchar, & Pilar (2009), the statistical procedure used examined students who were from Tirat HaCarmel, Israel. These students were studied at the town's health and child care center. Non-obese children were the control group, and they were matched up with obese children who were also studied. The match-ups included both gender and age. Then, children were divided even further into specific groups by age. These were 4-7 years, 8-11 years, and 12-18 years (Hering, et al., 2009). Four different criteria were used over a period of two years in order to get results that were statistically significant. These criteria were visits to the emergency department, visits to the clinic, medication usage, and whether the child was hospitalized (Hering, et al., 2009).
The study reached the conclusions that there were more than 4000 children treated at the care center, and there were 363 children who were obese and who were matched to 382 children out of the control group (Hering, et al., 2009). The obese children were at the clinic significantly more often (4942 vs. 4058) (Hering, et al., 2009). They also had more hospitalizations (67 vs. 34), and stayed in the hospital much longer (207 vs. 79 days) (Hering, et al., 2009). Additionally, the obese children were on more medications than the non-obese children (5945 vs. 4638) (Hering, et al., 2009). Because that was seen, the researchers concluded that obesity in children is definitely associated with a higher use of the health care system and a rise in...
Naturally, this is a serious issue for these children, their parents, and the healthcare community, along with the community at large. Clear implications are seen from this study, both for public health and insurance sectors that are being hit hard by the childhood obesity epidemic (Hering, et al., 2009). Until childhood obesity is brought under control, healthcare costs will continue to rise.
The conclusions for this study are appropriate, because the study clearly shows that children who are obese take more medications, spend more time in the hospital more frequently and go to the clinic for assistance more often than children who are not obese. While this is a drain on the healthcare system financially, it also takes up a lot of time that could have been used to treat other people who also needed the healthcare (Hering, et al., 2009). When people have to wait too long to see a doctor or when doctors and clinics and hospitals are crowded and overbooked, the risk to those people rises. That is an unfortunate issue, and can be very hard to handle in the hearts and minds of individuals. At the same time, however, it is unfair to expect children to bear the brunt of the anger and upset over the obesity epidemic, because children are generally a product of their environments (Hering, et al., 2009). In other words, it is the environment that must be changed to avoid continuing high levels of childhood obesity in the future.
The findings are statistically…
