Healthcare in a New Policy

¶ … Healthcare

In a new policy brief released by the UCLA (2009) Center for Health Policy Research, they were able to discover that, "adolescents are more likely to eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables a day if their parents do. Contrarily, teens whose parents eat fast food or drink soda are more likely to do the same. Every day, more than 2 million California adolescents (62%) drink soda and 1.4 million (43%) eat fast food, but only 38% eat five or more servings of fruits and vegetables, according to the policy brief, "Teen Dietary Habits Related to Those of Parents."

With this alarming report of having a significant portion of the population ranges from overweight to obese -- parents, schools and communities need to team up to enhance the health and condition of American youths.

The proposed research is to educate the public in having a wellness program that would make the public in becoming more aware of adapting a proper and well-balanced life (i.e., diet, exercise, etc.) through today's youth.

Another objective is to recommend that schools, as the youth's second home, can start on lobbying the importance of having physical education in their curriculum. Although this does not solve the problem easily, bearing in mind that there are various factors that contribute to America's overweight condition, but being able to familiarize the children in having physical activities and hopefully, they would adapt this as they grow older; thus, it may have a long-term impact on the future of public health.

Our educators can help change the alarming rate of teen obesity by teaching about health risks, changing cafeteria menus, improving the physical education programs, work in partnership with the local community in applying a health and wellness program.

We will get respondents from public schools and private schools, teens who are leading a 'healthy' lifestyle -- exercising regularly or with regular physical activity and eating healthy foods like fruits and vegetables; and those lead an 'unhealthy' lifestyle -- no regular physical activity and eating unhealthy food like fast food, junk food, etc. They will be asked to write down in a week-long journal, or log all the activities that they do and food that they eat. Along with it is a questionnaire that will ask them several questions related to their lifestyle, health beliefs, influencers, and factors that may affect their decisions, among other things.

Through the use of multivariate analysis, we will be able to find out the prevailing patterns or trends in the data. Multivariate Analysis deals with observations on more than one variable where there is some inherent interdependence between the variables -- learning how the groups differ; and to be able to find relationships between columns in data tables, for instance relationships between process operation conditions and product quality (Feinstein, 1996). The objective is to use one set of variables (columns) to predict another, for the purpose of optimization, and to find out which columns are important in the relationship. Here, we can compare the lifestyles through social status, activities they are involved in, physical activities and diet.

Research tells us that obesity and being overweight play a role in cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension, coronary heart disease, arthritis and colon, breast, uterine and prostate cancers. The health risks of being overweight are no secret, of course, and yet there appears to be no widespread urgency to address this trend (UCLA, 2009). Through this study, the writer hopes that public becomes more aware on which lifestyle they would like to choose -- hopefully, the health and wellness campaign that will be of benefit to everyone in the long run. Parents of overweight children have to go all-out to present healthy diet alternatives and train their children to make careful food choices when they are outside home.

The community food stores, such as the grocery or supermarket, can give discount for students or families that are into the community's health and wellness program, like distributing coupons to schools during the health and wellness campaign. So that children and their families are given the necessary push to change their 'unhealthy lifestyle.'