St. Joseph’s Health is a healthcare organization located in Paterson, a New Jersey City, with a population of 148,678 people. The city’s biggest challenge has been the large number of obese children. A recent community health needs assessment has identified obesity as the city’s top health concern, followed by diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and stroke (St. Joseph’s Health, 2020). The problem can be attributed to the city’s socio-economic dynamics. Parents, for example, have busy schedules, and this leaves them with no time to cook at home. They prefer buying junk food from fast food outlets. This food has high calories that increase the risk of developing obesity among children. In most Paterson schools, no health and physical education programs are available. Again, physical activity among children is low, as many of them stay indoors watching TV and playing video games (St. Joseph’s Health, 2020). St. Joseph’s Health has embarked on a program whose aim is to mitigate the risks of obesity among children enable them to stay healthy. This paper would recommend strategies that St. Joseph’s Health may adopt to mitigate the risks of childhood obesity in Paterson, describe how the strategy would be implemented, identify the metrics that would be used to measure success, and propose contingency plans for implementation.
Strategies and Recommendations
There are various strategies that St. Joseph’s Health can use to fulfill its mission of influencing families and children to improve their lifestyles throughout their lifetime. These strategies should be geared toward promoting healthy lifestyles for the most vulnerable group in Paterson: the children from underserved families.
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First, St. Joseph’s Health should target parents and children from underserved backgrounds and provide them with training and education on how to prevent childhood obesity. Underserved families are characterized by limited access to healthy meals and food plans. These families are also less informed about what they can do to help their children live healthy lives. By providing these families with simple and cost-convenient ways of accessing healthy foods, the lifestyles of their children would be improved (Let’s Move, 2020). The families should also be informed about the health outcomes that would be created by healthy food choices, including eating fruits and vegetables, and avoiding high calories foods, such as junk foods.
Secondly, it is recommendable for St. Joseph’s Health to take a leadership position in advocating for policies that encourage healthy lifestyles among children in schools, physician offices, and home environments. In schools, policy actions include directing schools to provide improved infrastructure to promote physical activities, such as bicycling, walking, sporting, and outdoor recreation (ODPHP, 2017) . Again, the school should create opportunities for children to participate in extracurricular physical activities like athletics. School feeding programs in vulnerable communities should provide plenty of diaries, whole-grain, fruit, and vegetable products.
Nutrition and physical activity policies should be extended to physician offices, whereby family physicians should advocate for healthy nutrition and reduced sedentary time. Because of their influence, family doctors are better placed to advocate for improved nutrition, mandatory breastfeeding for at least six months, and heightened physical activity at national, state, and local levels (Let’s Move, 2020). They can also push governments to implement healthy food financing initiatives, which involve bringing grocery stores healthy food retailers closer to underserved communities. Pricing policies for healthy foods will make healthy food alternatives affordable and accessible to economically-deprived households in Paterson. Retailers should be compelled to post calorie information and limit sale of food products that have low nutritional value.
In home contexts, St. Joseph’s Health should educate parents about the health benefits of breastfeeding for an extended period, at least six months. Again, parents should encourage their children to engage in outdoor play and physical activities after school hours and over the weekends ( Kurbo, 2019) . Screen time should be limited because too much consumption of TV, smartphone, computer, and internet-based content is associated with a high risk of obesity among children. TV and the internet also expose children to an advertisement of unhealthy foods and beverages and this influences them to embrace unhealthy eating habits.
Similarly, parents, despite the challenges that they face due to busy schedules, should emphasize on cooking at home, as opposed to purchasing packaged foods from restaurants and fast food outlets. Meals prepared at home should be low carbohydrates and calories, with a bulk of fruits, vegetables, whole-grain, and dairy products. Children should be discouraged from buying or eating junk foods and sugar-sweetened beverages while in their own ( Kurbo, 2019) .
Strategy Implementation
There are numerous implementation methods that St. Joseph’s Health can use to ensure the success of its obesity mitigation cause. The ultimate goal of implementing this proposal is to bring down child obesity prevalence in Paterson, New Jersey. First, St. Joseph’s Health will use different channels to raise public awareness about obesity as a debilitating condition and educate communities about risk factors and mitigating measures they should take to prevent their children from developing the condition (Let’s Move, 2020). This would be in line with St. Joseph’s Health’s vision of advocating for policies to prevent obesity and implementing the best practices for childhood obesity treatment and prevention. In this direction, different promotion strategies would be deployed, including printing and distribution of healthy family meals cookbooks (St. Joseph’s Health, 2020). These cookbooks would also be made available on the organization’s community sites, whereby it would be shared with participants of parent programs. Again, web banners would be used to illustrate topics that are related to caregiving and steps that parents can take to help their children to maintain healthy eating and physical activities.
Promotion would also be made through a community website. Through this website, people will have access to real-life success stories about initiatives that families have taken to mitigate the risk of childhood obesity. Storytelling will be used to emphasize the importance of good health, and this will attract people’s attention to the success stories. Through the community website, residents of Paterson will also be introduced to potential partners, stakeholders, and community resources that are relevant to childhood obesity mitigation.
St. Joseph’s Health will take advantage of digital platforms, such as social media sites, to raise public awareness and educate people about the program. Social media would be a good place to build engagement with underserved communities and educate parents about the benefits of long-term healthy lifestyles to their children (ODPHP, 2017) . On Facebook, St. Joseph’s Health would create visuals that are attractive and encourage customers to share and tag real-life stories. Timely and well-articulated responses to customers will give them a reason to follow through the organization’s Facebook page.
Success Measures
Different indicators will be used to measure the progress of the childhood obesity prevention program. Progress will be continually evaluated alongside heightened engagement of customers to ensure that the program goals are met. First, St. Joseph’s Health will rely on data from state surveys on the percentage of children who are obese. Currently, the percentage of children who are obese in Paterson is 37%. A future reduction in the rate of childhood obesity would signal program success (Ackermann et al., 2015). Secondly, St. Joseph’s Health will use social media engagement as the basis for measuring the success of the program. An increase in the number of comments, shares, likes, and tags would indicate that people are finding the information posted on social media useful in their lives. Thirdly, telephone surveys would be conducted to collect public views of the program and to assess the program’s level of penetration.
Contingency Plan
Failure of the program to post progress due to unexpected events would prompt St. Joseph’s Health to redefine it or adopt a contingency plan. The first alternative would involve setting a wellness center that will provide gym and physical exercise classes for weight management alongside free healthy foods. Participants to the wellness center would be required to first register for the program. The second alternative would involve having families sign up for SNAP benefits. Parents who will qualify for SNAP benefits will have their children automatically qualify for other benefits, such as free school lunches and free cooking classes.
Conclusion
St. Joseph’s Health’s childhood obesity program has the potential of reducing the prevalence of obesity in Paterson, NJ. The city has one of the highest childhood obesity rates in the state. The program aims to empower parents and caregivers by educating them about the importance of physical exercise and healthy eating in their families. The program is informed by literature that had demonstrated that healthy food and physical exercise puts children on the path to a better future.
References
Ackermann, G., Kirschner, M., Guggenbühl, L., Abel, B., Klohn, A., & Mattig, T. (2015). Measuring success in obesity prevention: a synthesis of Health Promotion Switzerland's long-term monitoring and evaluation strategy. Obesity facts , 8 (1), 17–29. https://doi.org/10.1159/000374082
Kurbo. (2019). Eat Healthier, Move More, Feel Great. Accessed via internet, link https://kurbo.com/?gclid=CjwKCAiAnfjyBRBxEiwA-EECLOvbIzJKMY2eD2uCAPG8T5HqfW9safvUMk8aTbfmpNb-MnlIjgaMwhoCr4gQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds
Let’s Move (2020). America’s Move to Raise a Healthier Generation of Kids. A webpage, link https://letsmove.obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/about
Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP). (2017). Tool-kit: National Childhood Awareness Month. Accessed via internet, https://health.gov/news-archive/blog/2017/09/toolkit-national-childhood-obesity-awareness-month-2/index.html
St. Joseph’s Health (2020). 2017-2019 Community Health Needs Assessment Implementation Strategy, Accessed via the internet, https://www.stjosephshealth.org/images/Implementation%20strategy%201.pdf
