Childhood obesity has more than tripled in American
adolescents in the past decade. Nearly 32% of American children are overweight
or obese.
The intervention I would like to implement relates to my
environmental determinant. I would like to execute an intervention in schools
removing vending machines and adding more nutritious foods to lunch meals. Kids
spend 2/3 of their day in school and I believe they should be served nutritious
foods as some of their only options. “School-based efforts have been oriented
towards prevention, targeting all students in selected classes to avoid
stigmatization of obese children. Planet Health is an interdisciplinary
curriculum that aims to decrease dietary fat consumption, increase consumption
of fruits and vegetables, promote physical activity, and limit television
time.” (Ebbling, Pawlak, Ludwig, 2002)
A barrier for this would definitely be the cost. It’s
expensive to change the school food system to be mostly nutritional food
options. There really isn’t a way to change the cost, but this type of
intervention would be effective in the long run, so the cost is worth it.
Another obstacle is a social barrier. Families might have a
problem not having the option of buying sweet or salty snack in a vending
machine or being able to have their children buy a soda in the lunch line. Some
parents might view it as “taking away their rights.” But, I think if children
get in the habit of eating healthy, the urge to have sugary foods will decrease
over time.
In order for this plan to work, the stakeholders need to be
involved. (Strength in numbers.) I think the biggest contributor to this issue
could be the health insurance companies. They could contribute by backing the
public health officials that implement this intervention. I don’t think it will
be an issue getting insurance companies on board with this idea because it essentially
is beneficial to them in the long run, because they won’t have to pay for
children who have type two diabetes.
You could see how effective this intervention is by checking
school cafeterias monthly profit history to see how many kids are still buying
lunch compared to before. This way of doing this is easier then running an
actual test because it is cost effective and not time consuming. Doing an
intervention like this, I expect outcomes to be lower than before, but overtime
I think kids will start buying their lunches at school again out of convenience.
Work Cited:
Ebbeling, C. B., Pawlak, D. B., & Ludwig, D. S. (n.d.). Retrieved fromhttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673602096782
Laura,
ReplyDeleteI think you did a very nice job explaining your intervention and why the eventual benefits will help get it implemented. You brought to light two barriers that I definitely think would exist, but I can understand why the long term benefits of this intervention could be used to overcome them. I was just wondering, how do you think you'll be able to convince the school boards to accept to cost and be willing to change their food systems? Will the public health officials go and give a presentation to school boards or something like that? I think it would just make your intervention a little more detailed to explain how specifically school boards would learn about this and then be convinced to implement it in their schools. Also, do you think this intervention could be evaluated by measuring pediatric records of the children at these schools to see if there are lower rates of obesity overtime? Or will these small changes not be apparent in the kids for years?
Overall, you did a great job!
Alyssa
Hi Laura,
ReplyDeleteIn this assignment you're asked to discuss your intervention, and how you would implement and evaluate it. In your first paragraph about your intervention, you state you'd like to provide nutritious foods and remove vending machines. Then you included a quote from a paper about the Planet Health curriculum. So, is your intention to implement the curriculum? or, is it to remove vending machines and provide nutritious meals? These are two different things, and the more specific you can be about your intervention the better. You could even get more specific and simpler and say you'd like to remove vending machines in public schools in the US - this in and of itself would be very difficult to do.
As far as the barriers, you mention cost and social norms. I am not sure exactly how you will overcome these barriers. If cost is truly a barrier, it doesn't matter if the program is worth it if there is no money to pay for it. So, how would you raise money for the intervention. In terms of social barriers, what would you do to potentially change people's minds? Advocate? Educate? etc?
In terms of your intervention, HOW exactly will you get the word out about it? Will you advertise? etc, etc.
In terms of your stakeholders, you mention insurance companies. But, HOW will you get them on board? You mention this won't be an issue, and it may not be, but you could then tell your reader how you might engage the companies.
When you discuss your evaluation, how does measuring how many kids buy lunch have to do with removing vending machines and serving healthy options? Also, what is an "actual test"?
Remember to tell your reader about process and outcome measures too. Process outcomes will let us know our intervention is working, and and outcome measures the overall outcome of your intervention.
Please get in touch with me if you have further questions about incorporating these comments into your paper, or need help on anything else before the final paper is due!
Erin