Social Media Campaign to Combat Obesity

B. Community Health Nursing Diagnostic Statement 

Obesity as related to body illness is a complex disorder where excessive fat is accumulated in the body of a human being as evidenced by High blood pressure, Stroke, Osteoarthritis, Breathing disorders and metabolic syndrome (American Psychological Association, 2019). According to WHO subsidiary in Union County New Jersey, obesity affects both adults and children of all gender. The overweight rate for adults at this county was 24.70% in 2018 while that of children was found to be at 10.80%. Obesity results from unhealthy feeding fat content andlack of adequate physical activity to burn the excess calories. 

B1. Health Inequity or Disparity 

The Key health disparity in obesity noted in New Jersey by the American Psychological Association (APA) was related to age. APA found increased risks of heart diseases and diabetes caused by obesity in children and youth than the adults. The younger generation feeds mostly on foods with saturated fats while the aged most likely feed on vegetables and fruits reducing the risk of being overweight as these foods do not contain considerable saturated fats (Firestone, 2017, p. 110) . The APA also ranked New Jersey with the 10 th lowest adult overweight in America and the 22 nd highest overweight children and youth overweight rate in 2018. 

B1a. Primary Community and Prevention Resources 

The current primary community resources and the primary prevention measures that are available in within the health center in Union County are the fitness centers, nutrition experts and the comprehensive health centers for the treatment of the problem of obesity within the public. These facilities and resources make an important step towards the prevention of overweight disorders. They include: 40 Fit Organization that trains people in dietary regulation, fitness and weight loss, the YMCA seminars where healthy living lifestyles will be provided through the family oriented facility and the Trinitas WIC Program which will provide nutritional education and counseling services to breastfeeding mothers and their infants. 

B1b. Underlying Causes 

Obesity is potentially caused by the long-term and unhealthy feeding of more calories in the body than it can burn when a human being exercises and carries out activities on a daily basis (Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, 2019). Other underlying causes of being overweight are lack of adequate exercises, aging which slows the body’s metabolic processes hence a lot of fat is stored in the body tissues, lack of adequate sleep leading to hormonal disruption that cause one to crave for high fat foodstuffs or obesity may be a genetic disorder where genetics that affect food processing and fat storage vary and cause weight gain (American Psychological Association, 2019). 

B2. Evidence-Based Practice 

On 6/4/2019 I visited the Battle Hill Elementary school in Union County where I had a one hour interview with the gym teacher and a one hour interview with the school nursing attendant. I was able to gather information about physical exercises at the school, dietary options offered during meal times and nutritional education and counseling services at the school. This formed a basis of studying about the effect and prevention of obesity in children. According to the resource ‘Strategies to Improve the Implementation of Healthy Eating, Physical Activity and Obesity Prevention Policies, Practices or Programs Within Childcare Services in New Jersey in 2018’ provided by Healthy People 2020,Various childcare service based interventions have been observed to be successful in improving children' eating diet and lifestyle, expanding their physical action, and avoiding unnecessary weight gain. This methodical review aimed at evaluating the adequacy of procedures proposed to improve the execution of these arrangements, practices, or projects by childcare administrations and schools. It identified 10 studies that tried procedures, for example, educational materials, small motivations or grants, and learning outreach visits. It found strong and consistent proof of the viability of such systems in improving the execution of policies and practices, childcare administration staff information attitude or knowledge, or kids'diet, physical exercise, or weight status. An aggregate of 1053 childcare services participated over all preliminaries. Of the 10 preliminaries, eight analyzed implementation methodologies versus a standard practice control and two looked at alternative execution procedures. There was significant investigation heterogeneity. The researchers made a decision about all investigations as having high risk of inclination for at least one domain (Healthy People 2020, 2019). 

The second evidence based resource that I referenced to was ‘Preventing Childhood Obesity: Health in the Balance.’(Healthy People 2020, 2019). As per this EBP, a prevention-focused action plan was targeted to reduce the prevalence of overweight conditions in children in the US. Action steps were distinguished for the central government, industry and media, state and regional governments, health provision experts, community and non-benefit associations, state and regional learning specialists and schools, and guardians and families. Thisevidence based practice as provided by Healthy People 2020 for USA was further based on the dietary, physical exercise and behavioral interventions for the control of overweight conditions in school children of up to 13 years. The study found out that multiple factor interventions that integrate diet, physical exercises and change of behavior may be significant in achieving temporary reduction in BMI. The review further showed the strong correlation between age and obesity. While obesity rates have significantly decreased over the last 5 years, the health risk still remains one of the largest health concerns for the American society (Healthy People 2020, 2019). 

B2a. Identification of Data 

According to the current Union County statistics, more than one child in a group of five public school children is obese, which is approximately 21%. Consequently, a similar number of students are also overweight (18%). However, boys have higher chances of being obese compared to girls (24% vs. 19%) (Healthy People 2020, 2019). For the 10 trials the impact on the essential usage result was as per the following: among the three preliminaries that detailed score ‐ based measures of execution, the scores extended from 1 to 5.1; across over four preliminaries revealing the extent of staff or services actualizing a particular policy, this ranged from 0% to 9.5%; and in three preliminaries announcing the time (every day or week), staff or services spent executing an approach or practice this ran from 4.3 minutes to 7.7 minutes. These significant findings are an apparent indication of the overall risk health of elementary school children as compared to the adolescents and adults. Children between 6-13 years have a high craving for junk food with a high content of saturated calories. Also, their amount of physical exercise is lower as compared to adults and adolescents hence the risk. The State of New Jersey has started a follow-up program named PREVENT Obesity in an attempt to further research on the most competent post-intervention practices for decreasing obesity and sustaining good health for the state (Healthy People 2020, 2019). 

C1. Social Media Campaign Objective 

The objective for this social media campaign is to emphasize on the benefits of adopting low-calories diets, healthy lifestyles and adequate physical activity among children in Union County to reduce the rate of overweight school children by half as at 2023. 

C2. Social Marketing Interventions 

The interventions will include early care and education, community-based intervention approaches as well as home and family interventions that would reduce the problem. Early care and education will provided to young mothers on how to feed low fat feeds to their kids who are just about to join school. Community-based interventions will promote healthy eating and exercising for well-being and maintenance of healthy within the children and individuals suffering from the disease. Family interventions will be important where obesity is genetically transmitted as parents will be given appropriate instructions for healthy diets for their kids. 

C3. Social Media Platforms 

Facebook and Twitter are the best social media platforms that can be used to pass a message to the desired target population. The main reason is that these platforms have more than 2 billion combined users and are accessed for more than 2.5 billion times on a monthly basis. This will widely increase the awareness and interpretation of the objectives of the campaign (Eli, 2014, p. 27) . 

C3a. Benefits of Social Media Platform 

Some of the benefits of using these platforms include: people spend most of their time on Facebook and Twitter, which makes it easy to reach the targeted population, they are relatively cheap and accessible to even the low-income earners and these platforms offer convenient ways of advertising and relay of information like videos, ads and posting written data. Also, they offer a feedback basis through the comment section. This feedback can be used to improve the campaign (Eli, 2014, p. 29) . 

C4. Benefit to Target Population 

Adult parents and their children are targeted by this campaign to reduce obesity rates among children in Union County by 50% as at 2023. This campaign will consistently make life better for school children by cutting down their consumption of saturated fats and creating awareness on children exercise activities such as playing. Parents will also learn, to monitor their children’s weight and have a long-lasting commitment on observing their diet. 

D. Best Practices for Implementing Social Media Tools for Health Marketing 

Eli (2014),outlines that the utilization of social media tools is an influential channel to reach the masses with critical, competent and patient-centric health practices. To aid the arrangement, improvement and endorsement of social media exercises, some guidelines have been created to give critical data on adopted lessons, prescribed procedures, clearance data and security necessities. The four most competent guidelines for implementing social media tools for health marketing are: devoting efforts towards the social causes of wellbeing for Medicare and Medicaid members, finding cases and stories that are legitimate, dependable and can complement health adverts and campaigns on social media platforms, building of a synergized and valuable user experience and the utilization of data to drive the marketing strategy (Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, 2019). With these guidelines, healthcare organizations are becoming more motivated in issuing healthcare by advertising their products and services through platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. 

E1. Stakeholder Roles and Responsibilities 

In order for the campaign for health safety on social media platforms to break through, the stakeholders need to carry out the following: invest in the plan so as to determine the outcome of the social media health marketing strategy, make decisions to propel the plan towards its realization and offer control and check to me as the manager during the course of realization (Firestone, 2017, p. 119) . 

E2. Potential Partnerships 

In implementing a successful social media campaign for health safety, I will select three stakeholders; a public professional health organization and two private local communication companies. For the professional health affiliation, I will cooperate with the American Nurses Association who will provide the technical assistance through provision and development of guidelines, plans, tools and standards in supporting the recommendation besides disseminating the guidance for monitoring, implementation, and accountability in reporting on the progress to end obesity. For the technological counterpart, I will cooperate with Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. and urge them to create ads promoting healthy balanced-diet feeding and constant exercise for body fitness. Facebook and Twitter statistics show that over 2.32 billion users access the platform monthly and therefore this information will be widely received. These three will complement each other for an incredible campaign. 

E3. Implementation Timeline 

The implementation of this campaign will take one month and will refer to the previous practicum documentation 90 total hours of the selected activities investigating obesity in Union County. During the practicum, the community health issue covered was obesity where I engaged in communication with various health departments. Farmers markets, parks, YMCA, senior fitness centers, wic office and food banks were awesome resources for my nutritional and physical exercise observations. Our goal is to reduce obesity rates in Union county by half by 2023. Therefore, campaign will be implemented in one month to allow for proper cooperation, communication and coordination with all the stakeholders mentioned. The one month timeline followed will be comprehensive weeklylisting of what ought to be done, when, where and by whom will be useful with keeping occasions on track. In the first week, I will create a rational message for the campaign, develop a long-term strategy and mobilize the community to participate in. To facilitate this, I will create future blog content and messages for the campaign. The theme will be made and customized. I will then design a sign-up form for the audience to follow on Facebook and Twitter. This will allow updates to be conveyed when available. Amid week 2, I will arrange panel discussions and preparation of video and written materials in relevant languages. I will meet with Facebook and Twitter administrators at their offices to stress the necessity of the campaign and obtain support. We will develop content with key words that can easily be linked to the message and objective of the campaign. The written and video materials will be relevant to the target population and will have a long-lasting influence in the upcoming years. During week 3, our facility will devote time and cooperate with ANA so as to avail technical guidelines on how the health policies shall be spread. Our aim at this week is to secure services of influential nursing attendants to spread the health message later when the campaign begins. At week 4, our health facility will prepare for the commencement of the campaign by reviewing the written and video materials and present them to campaign review experts for addition of critical cont. Then a communication will be made to Facebook and Twitter for official commencement. The ads, videos and written posts shall be circulated through these platforms by the secured ANA nurses who bear a large potential of reaching out many residents in the society by spreading health messages. 

E4. How to Evaluate Effectiveness 

Effectiveness of a strategy can be measured using different tools (Firestone, 2017, p. 124) . To evaluate the effectiveness of my campaign, I will use two influential tools: volunteer surveys and taking polls from my campaign followers. For volunteer surveys, I would invite all the interested people to make their suggestions about the videos and ads on the provided sections. My survey would be made accessible to followers one week after implementing the campaign. Subsequent surveys would be availed after every one month. I would likewise review all comments and recommendations made on the page week by week and endeavor to tailor the page for my followers. Questions that I would incorporate into my survey to ensure that I was reaching my target populace is ask their age, race, and pay every year as these are related to obesity. Also, I would ask the following: "Did you find the material posted useful?", and "what might change or add to the online campaign page to improve it?" Effectiveness for volunteer surveys would be measure by tracking the number of view that each video or ad had, measure the number of likes each post received and confirm the number of subscribers, check the number of retweets and shares each post has and review comments left by viewers. If the number of views, likes, comments, shares and retweetsis reasonable, then the perception of the message will be considered successful. If the numbers are insignificant, then the campaign shall need improvements to succeed. 

Furthermore, an online poll will be conducted on Facebook and Twitter to measure the productivity and efficiency of the campaign. The objective of the campaign and a list of short multiple-choice poll questions will be listed on these social media platforms.The followers of my campaign will be required to choose their answers and give true information about their perception on the campaign. There shall be a section where the invited participants can comment on how the feel about the efficiency of campaign in battling obesity. After gathering the responses, the results from the comments and choices made shall be analyzed and grouped into positive and negative feedback. Review of views, likes, comments, retweets and shares will be on a weekly basis and successive videos, ads, posts and polls will be availed monthly on Facebook and Twitter.The campaign will be considered effective if the number of positive comments exceeds the negative ones by two thirds and if the likes significantly exceed the dislikes. The positive aspects of the campaign shall be continued while the negative aspects shall be corrected and changed to fit the overall participants’ needs and ensure that the objective of the health campaign is fulfilled as planned. 

E5. Cost of Implementation 

The cost will be 100000$. 50000$ will be used for 6250 Facebook and Twitter ads in 100 different major world languages each costing around 8$. The other half will be utilized for the review of the contents and publication of brochures and factsheets about the reduction and prevention of obesity and its effects in association with ANA. 

F. Reflection on Social Media Marketing 

Firestone (2017) defines health as the potential of adaptation and self-management. Social media has turned into the most favored strategy to stay in contact with family, friends and acquaintances and hence is an incredible method to dispatch information in a launched campaign. For those community members who are targeted by this social media campaigns, they become educated about health living and environments by the nurses who drive the campaign. In another way, the community achieves positive outcomes like increase in regional, county, state and national numbers due to health messages reached to them through the social media. Also, health marketing on social media by nurses has driven the community’s health, growth, immunity, and development towards a digital way as marketing and communications are performed at an information-rich platform. Nonetheless, through social communities, members of the society have provided insights on their health preferences and needs to the nursing practitioners therefore increasing nursing-patient relationship, loyalty and retention (Eli,2017). Practically all age groups utilize some type of social media every day. By joining internet based platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Instagram with a campaign identified with well-being, this is by far the quickest method to get the information to the vast majority. Again, social media marketing supports the community health nurse’s efforts to promote healthier populations. For instance, In Union County, through Facebook, Instagram, Google+ and Twitter posts, nurses and hospitals are able to connect with their family and friends and create a social component. Hospitals in this county have launched widespread campaigns to advertise the New Jersey PREVENT obesity campaign. Their health practitioners have been urged to reach their social media followers by tagging them on posts and videos about this campaign. This allows feedback and sharing of information about different health risks such as obesity. Moreover, these nursing attendants are utilizing social blogs such as NurseConnect and AllNurses which have aided in the sharing of unlimited information, education as well as standards of practice. 

F1. Reflection on Future Nursing Practice 

As a professional nursing practitioner, I will be registered with the American Nurses Association and will have a great influence on the communities’ health promotion. I will step forward and be a leader in advocating use of Facebook and Twitter for health purposes rather than for recreational purposes which most of the community members prefer. Nonetheless, my online campaign effort would enable me to additionally comprehend the concerns of the general population in my community, perceive their deficiencies, and recognize their health and safety obstacles. It would likewise permit me the chance to interface with other well-being experts and exchange data in the social media environment. 

References 

American Psychological Association. (2019). Obesity in America . Retrieved May 15, 2019, from Psychology in Daily Life: https://www.apa.org/ 

Eli, K. (2014). Obesity, Eating Disorders and the Media. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing. 

Firestone, R. (2017). The Effectiveness of Social Marketing in Global Health: A systematic Review. Journal of Health Policy and Planning, 32 (1), 110-124 

Healthy People 2020. (2019). Diet, Physical Activity and Behavioural Interventions fot the Treatment of Overweight or Obese Children of upto 13 Years. Retrieved May 17, 2019, from Healthy People 2020: https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/healthy-people-2020 

Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. (2019). Childhood Overweight and Obesity. Retrieved May 15, 2019, from Centres for Disease Control and Prevention: https://www.cdc.gov/