HEP 452 Final Health Advocacy Campaign Report on Obesity Management

Background Research:

Obesity has been a significant issue in the United States, and this can be attributed to the poor lifestyle that most individuals have chosen to live (Raziani & Raziani, 2020). While lack of access to healthy foods has also been a contributing factor to obesity, poor lifestyle behaviors have contributed highly to the increased cases of obesity in our region. People no longer have the urge to engage in positive behavior that can help reduce their body weight, and even those who do, end up giving up due to lack of motivation. A recommended course of action to help in weight management include engaging in physical activities and exercise. Physical activities help in cutting down the weight of a person as it increases the total energy expenditure, which can help them stay in energy balance or even lose weight as long as they regulate their eating behavior to prevent compensating for the extra calories that were burned during exercise (Petridou, Siopi & Mougios, 2019). When a person engages in physical activity, they decrease the amount of fat around their waist and the total body fat, which helps in slowing the development of abdominal obesity.

Despite the increased health benefits of engaging in physical exercise, many people still find it difficult to adhere to a specific regimen. Weight lifting, push-ups, and other muscle-strengthening activities help an individual build their muscle mass, increasing the amount of energy that is burned throughout the day, even when the body is at rest (Bülbül, 2020). Based on this, an individual can easily manage their weight by engaging in weight lifting activities. However, the current economic crisis has made it difficult for people to engage in physical exercise. People work in more than one job to help feed their family and live a better life, and thus, spend most of their time working in offices. As a result, they have less free time, which they may use to reconnect with their friends and loved ones before the next day kicks on and the routine continues.

On the other hand, children have almost a similar experience and spend most of their time in gaming and social media after school. They rarely get time to engage in healthy behaviors such as skating, bike riding, jogging, or even playing soccer or basketball. Most children are dropped to school, which means that their routine involves waking up, being dropped to school, sitting for more than six hours in a day, dropped back home, and spend the rest of the day in social media and gaming. While parents also take buses or drive to work, they find little time to walk, jog or even attend a physical gym for weight lifting activities that can help burn extra calories. Balancing between work and physical exercise can be beneficial in maintaining the appropriate weight, which will help individuals remain healthy and reduce the risk of obesity.

An alternative to going to the gym may include cycling, a perfect way to help maintain a healthy life for all individuals, both adults and children. Rather than driving or being dropped to work, children and adults can use bicycles to go to school and work, which is more fun and healthier compared to being dropped to work and school (Devarajan, Prabhakaran & Goenka, 2020). Cycling is mostly an aerobic activity, which means that it improves the heart rate, blood vessels, and lungs (Dominelli et al., 2019). Individuals in cycling activities breathe deeper, perspire and experience increased body temperature, which contributes to improving the overall fitness level among the participants. However, the current infrastructure in regards to cycling is inadequate, as the cyclists, including those who may wish to use bicycles to school and work, have to compete with motor vehicles for cycling space as there are inadequate cycling paths in the country.

Idea:

The idea is to help increase the number of people engaging in cycling as the main physical activity, which will help transform our population into healthy individuals. Cycling to school and work helps in cutting down weight and helps the community adopt positive behaviors meant to improve their health. While constructing cycling paths may be the long-term goal for the government, advocating for behavioral change among the community members is the first priority, to create awareness to the local population. Conducting a grassroots campaign through community meetings is the main strategy to preach behavioral change. Such meetings should have a cycling theme and should be accompanied by hashtags to advocate for behavioral change. The plan here is to get more people involved in spreading the news, helping more people realize that they don’t have to kick out obesity by only going to the gym. Obese individuals are always a target for bullying and stigmatization. Thus, it would be in the best interest that the community adopts alternative physical exercise to help manage their weight to healthy levels.

Plan:

Adopting a social media campaign through the promotion of #Cyclingforgoodhealth as well as conducting an actual demonstration on the streets will help initiate a successful behavioral change. To help increase the effectiveness of my advocacy, I collaborated with friends and other well-wishers who helped me spread the hashtag on social media and joined me for a grassroots campaign in which we distributed several bicycles to children and adults to help them commute work with ease. During these campaigns, we advocated for cycling to work due to health benefits and the efficiency of cycling in evading traffic, minimizing the chances of being late to school and work. The reason behind this was to increase acceptance by persuading the people, and through this, we expect a positive change of behavior which will eventually help in managing weight and thus, reduce the prevalence of obesity in our region.

Photo Evidence:

References

Bülbül, S. (2020). Exercise in the treatment of childhood obesity. Turkish Archives of Pediatrics/Türk Pediatri Arşivi, 55(1), 2.

Devarajan, R., Prabhakaran, D., & Goenka, S. (2020). Built environment for physical activity—An urban barometer, surveillance, and monitoring. Obesity Reviews, 21(1), e12938.

Dominelli, P. B., Katayama, K., Vermeulen, T. D., Stuckless, T. J., Brown, C. V., Foster, G. E., & Sheel, A. W. (2019). Work of breathing influences muscle sympathetic nerve activity during semi‐recumbent cycle exercise. Acta Physiologica, 225(4), e13212.

Petridou, A., Siopi, A., & Mougios, V. (2019). Exercise in the management of obesity. Metabolism, 92, 163-169.

Raziani, Y., & Raziani, S. (2020). Investigating the predictors of overweight and obesity in children. Int. J. Adv. Stu. Hum. Soc. Sci, 9(4), 262-280.