Biopsychosocial Population Health Policy Proposal Essay
Biopsychosocial Population Health Policy Proposal Essay
Childhood obesity is a crucial public health issue that most countries face in the 21st century. Global statistics demonstrate the rate of childhood obesity globally has risen by 30% over the last 20 years. The overall rise in childhood obesity has been exponential in the last 30-40 years. Risk factors such as genetics, sedentary lifestyles, socioeconomic influences, and lack of physical activity are cited for predisposing children to obesity. The effects of childhood obesity include cardiovascular disorders, diabetes, and cancer. It also increases the risk of premature mortality due to comorbidities, including cancer and cardiovascular disease. Nurses and other healthcare providers play crucial roles in implementing strategies to address childhood obesity. Therefore, this paper proposes a policy and guidelines that should be adopted to improve outcomes and quality of care for obese children in the USA.
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Proposed Policy and Guidelines
Childhood obesity is attributed to preventable and modifiable risk factors, including sedentary lifestyles, unhealthy diets, and lack of physical activity. Interventions that address the modifiable factors related to childhood obesity are effective. As a result, a policy that aims at integrated nutritional policy and increasing physical activity is recommended in this paper to address childhood obesity: the integrated nutritional and active physical activity policy focuses on healthcare providers and educational stakeholders in its implementation. Healthcare providers, including nurses, are responsible for initiating health education programs in their settings and communities to raise awareness about the need for lifestyle and behavioral modifications (Chakraborty et al., 2019). They also have the role of engaging in public health campaigns to raise awareness and empower positive change among those affected and at risk of childhood obesity. Educational stakeholders, including teachers, also play a role in implementing the policy. They use their power to influence school-going children to embrace positive nutritional practices and engage in active physical activity to address obesity (Taghizadeh et al., 2021). They also incorporate the policy into the school programs related to physical activity and nutrition.
The integrated nutrition aspect of the policy will focus on obesity and stunting among children. The program will raise awareness among the parents about healthy nutrition, the effects of obesity, and how to reverse obesity and overweight by adopting healthy nutritional choices. The practical implementation of the nutritional policy will promote linear growth in children. The other focus of the nutritional policy will be on increasing the access to and availability of healthy diets for the vulnerable communities (Chakraborty et al., 2019). Families will have various options to consider for diets if availability and access issues are addressed.
Physical activity is the other aspect of the policy to address childhood obesity. Healthcare providers and teachers will play the role of emphasizing and encouraging the involvement of children in active physical activity. Regular exercises are essential in facilitating weight loss, increasing the body metabolism rate, and strengthening muscles and bones. The healthcare providers will also be responsible for initiating programs that enhance physical activity among children (Bellew et al., 2019). Examples of the programs will include e-branding, which will target children through games and competition. The involved stakeholders will also advocate the creation of safe communities where children have enhanced access to healthy diets and adequate spaces for engaging in active physical activity (Chakraborty et al., 2019). Therefore, the implementation of the policy will address childhood obesity by encouraging linear growth and reducing stunting.
Advocacy for the Policy
The proposed policy should be adopted because of several reasons. First, childhood obesity has adverse health effects that lower the quality of life for the affected populations. It predisposes them to health problems, including obesity, cancer, and cardiovascular issues. (Zhang et al., 2020). Obesity also acts as a source of disease burden to children, their families, and communities. Families suffer the emotional, psychological, and economic burden of ensuring that the health needs of the affected children are met. Nurses have the professional obligation of protecting the health needs of vulnerable populations, including children in their societies (Chakraborty et al., 2019). As a result, they must advocate implementing effective policies that would address childhood obesity in the state.
Potential for Inter-professional Collaboration
Inter-professional collaboration is needed to implement the proposed policy and guidelines successfully. Healthcare providers have to collaborate to ensure the successful implementation of the policy. Nurses, physicians, nutritionists, and pediatricians have to collaborate in identifying the children at risk and affected by obesity and providing health education on integrated nutrition and active physical activity. Healthcare providers will also have to collaborate with public health officials in organizing public health campaigns addressing childhood obesity (Jakubowski & Perron, 2018). The campaigns will enhance awareness among the public on issues related to childhood obesity and its prevention.
Healthcare providers will also work with education stakeholders to implement the policy. They will organize school health education programs to raise awareness among schoolchildren about obesity and its prevention. Educational stakeholders, healthcare providers, and public health professionals will also collaborate with the parents of the children affected and at risk of obesity. They will help parents develop individualized plans of care that address the unique needs of their children. They will also empower them to take responsibility for the health and wellbeing of their children. Healthcare providers and educational stakeholders will also have to collaborate with the policymakers to support the policy’s implementation (Jensen et al., 2017). Therefore, the policy’s success will largely depend on the nature of the adopted inter-professional collaboration.
Conclusion
Childhood obesity is a crucial public health concern in most countries, including the USA. Childhood obesity is attributed to modifiable factors such as unhealthy eating habits, lack of physical activity, and sedentary behaviors. The implementation of a policy that addresses the modifiable factors is appropriate. Therefore, this paper has proposed integrated nutrition and physical activity policy to address the issue of childhood obesity in the state.
References
Bellew, W., Bauman, A., Kite, J., Foley, B., Reece, L., Thomas, M., Mihrshahi, S., & King, L. (2019). Obesity prevention in children and young people: What policy actions are needed? Public Health Research & Practice, 29(1). https://apo.org.au/node/223576
Chakraborty, T. R., Almathhur, R., Suh, C., & Chakraborty, S. (2019). Chapter 35 – Childhood Obesity: Health Policies and Interventions. In D. Bagchi (Ed.), Global Perspectives on Childhood Obesity (Second Edition) (pp. 455–472). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-812840-4.00035-9
Jakubowski, T. L., & Perron, T. J. (2018). The Evolution of an Interprofessional Approach to Combatting Childhood Obesity in an Urban Setting. https://sigma.nursingrepository.org/handle/10755/624363
Jensen, B., Anderson-Knott, M., Bowne, M., Boeckner, L., Stluka, S., Kattelmann, K., & Meendering, J. (2017). Innovation and Collaboration: Creating a Transdisciplinary Childhood Obesity Prevention Graduate Certificate Program. Health and Interprofessional Practice, 3(2), eP1125.
Taghizadeh, S., Khodayari-Zarnaq, R., & Farhangi, M. A. (2021). Childhood obesity prevention policies in Iran: A policy analysis of agenda-setting using Kingdon’s multiple streams. BMC Pediatrics, 21(1), 250. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12887-021-02731-y
Zhang, J., Xu, P., & Liu, F. (2020). One-child policy and childhood obesity. China Economic Review, 59, 100938. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chieco.2016.05.003
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Develop a 2-4 page proposal for a policy that should help to improve health care and outcomes for your target population.
Introduction
Note: Each assessment in this course builds on the work you completed in the previous assessment. Therefore, you must complete the assessments in this course in the order in which they are presented.
Cost and access to care continue to be main concerns for patients and providers. As technology improves our ability to care for and improve outcomes in patients with chronic and complex illnesses, questions of cost and access become increasingly important. As a master’s-prepared nurse, you must be able to develop policies that will ensure the delivery of care that is effective and can be provided in an ethical and equitable manner.
As a master’s-prepared nurse, you have a valuable viewpoint and voice with which to advocate for policy developments. As a nurse leader and health care practitioner, often on the front lines of helping individuals and populations, you are able to articulate and advocate for the patient more than any other professional group in health care. This is especially true of populations that may be underserved, underrepresented, or are otherwise lacking a voice. By advocating for and developing policies, you are able to help drive improvements in outcomes for specific populations. The policies you advocate for could be internal ones (just within a specific department or health care setting) that ensure quality care and compliance. Or they could be external policies (local, state, or federal) that may have more wide-ranging effects on best practices and regulations.
Preparation
As you prepare to complete this assessment, you may want to think about other related issues to deepen your understanding or broaden your viewpoint. You are encouraged to consider the questions below and discuss them with a fellow learner, a work associate, an interested friend, or a member of your professional community. Note that these questions are for your own development and exploration and do not need to be completed or submitted as part of your assessment.
What are the relevant best practices from a population health standpoint (cultural competence, disease prevention, and interventions) for your chosen health issue and vulnerable population?
How are these best practices relevant to your chosen health issue and vulnerable population?
Do the best practices make any reference to standards of care or benchmarks that should be achieved?
How could these best practices be leveraged to help inform or develop a policy and guidelines to improve care and outcomes for the vulnerable population you are working with?
How could technology be used to identify health concerns or collect data that could help health care practitioners determine which health care issues to focus on in a population?
What are the relevant laws, regulations, or policies for employing any of the technology you might find useful?
What type of policy and guidelines would be most likely to ensure improvements in care and outcomes related to your chosen health issue and vulnerable population?
Are there any policies in existence that could help inform your own policy development?
How might your proposed policy and guidelines influence the way in which care is accessed?
How might your proposed policy and guidelines influence the amount of access that is available?
Assessment 2 will build on the health issue, vulnerable population, and position that you started to develop in the first assessment. For Assessment 2, you will develop a proposal for a policy and a set of guidelines that could be implemented to ensure improvements in care and outcomes. Refer to the resource listed below:
Guiding Questions: Biopsychosocial Population Health Policy Proposal [DOC].
Scenario
The analysis of position papers that your interprofessional team presented to the committee has convinced them that it would be worth the time and effort to develop a new policy to address your specific issue in the target population. To that end, your interprofessional team has been asked to submit a policy proposal that outlines a specific approach to improving the outcomes for your target population. This proposal should be supported by evidence and best practices that illustrate why the specific approaches are likely to be successful. Additionally, you have been asked to address the ways in which applying your policy to interprofessional teams could lead to efficiency or effectiveness gains.
Instructions
For this assessment you will develop a policy proposal that seeks to improve the outcomes for the health care issue and target population you addressed in Assessment 1. If for some reason you wish to change your specific issue and/or target population, contact your FlexPath faculty.
The bullet points below correspond to the grading criteria in the scoring guide. Be sure that your submission addresses all of them. You may also want to read the Biopsychosocial Population Health Policy Proposal Scoring Guide and Guiding Questions: Biopsychosocial Population Health Policy Proposal [DOC] to better understand how each grading criterion will be assessed.
Propose a policy and guidelines that will lead to improved outcomes and quality of care for a specific issue in a target population.
Advocate the need for a proposed policy in the context of current outcomes and quality of care for a specific issue in a target population.
Analyze the potential for an interprofessional approach to implementing a proposed policy to increase the efficiency or effectiveness of the care setting to achieve high-quality outcomes.
Communicate proposal in a professional and persuasive manner, writing content clearly and logically with correct use of grammar, punctuation, and spelling.
Integrate relevant sources to support assertions, correctly formatting citations and references using APA style.
Example Assessment: You may use the assessment example, linked in the Assessment Example section of the Resources, to give you an idea of what a Proficient or higher rating on the scoring guide would look like.
Additional Requirements
Length of proposal: 2-4 double-spaced, typed pages, not including title page or reference list. Your proposal should be succinct yet substantive.
Number of references: Cite a minimum of 3-5 sources of scholarly or professional evidence that supports the relevance of or need for your policy, as well as interprofessional considerations. Resources should be no more than five years old.
APA formatting: The APA Style Paper Tutorial [DOCX] will help you in writing and formatting your analysis.
Competencies Measured
By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and assessment criteria:
Competency 1: Design evidence-based advanced nursing care for achieving high-quality population outcomes.
Propose a policy and guidelines that will lead to improved outcomes and quality of care for a specific issue in a target population.
Competency 2: Evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of interprofessional interventions in achieving desired population health outcomes.
Analyze the potential for an interprofessional approach to implementing a proposed policy to increase the efficiency or effectiveness of the care setting to achieve high quality outcomes.
Competency 3: Analyze population health outcomes in terms of their implications for health policy advocacy.
Advocate the need for a proposed policy in the context of current outcomes and quality of care for a specific issue in a target population.
Competency 4: Communicate effectively with diverse audiences, in an appropriate form and style, consistent with organizational, professional, and scholarly standards.
Communicate proposal in a professional and persuasive manner, writing content clearly and logically with correct use of grammar, punctuation, and spelling.
Integrate relevant sources to support assertions, correctly formatting citations and references using APA style.