Obesity in America Essay Example

📌Category: Health, Human Body
📌Words: 1523
📌Pages: 6
📌Published: 18 July 2020

The purpose of the epidemiological diagnosis is to provide invaluable information about potential causes of health problems that leads to the greatest threat to the health and quality of life within the population. The epidemiological diagnosis will help evaluate the most deserving of limited resources. Therefore, this is where we will be using the information gathered and the decisions made from the social diagnosis and become researchers to find data about the concerns in Accenture. 

After evaluating Accenture and holding two meeting regards the health concerns, we came to a conclusion to research and find data about the top three major concerns which are obesity, hypertension, and lack of physical activity. This issues was determined by conducting a questionnaire for employees and holding a meeting within the decision making committee to narrow down the top three health issues. We came to notice that Accenture employees have a sedentary lifestyle, and they want to make changes in the lifestyles of all employees to increase the quality of life. Therefore, Mr. Williams and I discussed that the overall health goal would be based on research information provided for the top three health concerns. In order to make some changes, we need to take some steps to implement motivation for physical activity, then the company will feel more enthusiastic and relaxed causing decrease in health issues.

In this diagnosis we will be taking the three health concerns identified in the social diagnosis and look into details for prevalence, mortality, and the annual cost related to the top three major concerns. We will also look into other facts that will help us narrow down the concerns to the target concern for the upcoming health promotion program at Accenture. We will compare the actual data with the perceived problems of the company by giving them a better background of their health concerns, allowing them to make the right decision of health problem they want to focus and base the behavior change intervention on. 

Epidemiology Data:

During the last meeting, the decision making committee decided the three major concerns for Accenture, being obesity, hypertension, and lack of physical activity caused by workload. We will now take these three issues and conduct a scientific research to find the data from the nation and statewide based on these three concerns. 

Our first major concern was obesity. Obesity imposes devastating health concerns on employers and the company.  The prevalence of the obesity was 39.8% and affected about 93.3 million of US adults in 2015-2016 (Adult Obesity Facts , 2018). Moreover, we researched about Ohio and came across that, Ohio has the 17th highest adult obesity rate in the nation and Ohio’s adult obesity rate is currently 34.0%, up from 20.6% in 2000 and from 11.3% in 1990 (The State of obesity in Ohio , 2018). Therefore, obesity is increasing throughout the world and nation, causing major health issues. In fact, it was concluded that obesity is most common, serious, and costly. Furthermore, the World Health Organization(WHO) stated that, “an increase in physical inactivity due to the increasing sedentary nature of many forms of work, changing modes of transportation, and increasing urbanization” (Obesity and Overweight, 2018). Basically, continuing increase in technology is causing individuals to become sedentary, which is consequently increasing obesity. Likewise, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that people who are obese, compared to those with a normal or healthy weight, are at increased risk for many serious diseases and health conditions including death (Adult Obesity Causes & Consequences, 2017). In fact, they also said that, “obesity is a serious concern because it is associated with poorer mental health outcomes, reduced quality of life, and the leading causes of death in the U.S. and worldwide…” (Adult Obesity Causes & Consequences, 2017). 

To further understand the issue, Mr. Williams and I, further researched the cost due to obesity. CDC stated that, “The medical care costs of Obesity in the United States are high. In 2008 dollars, these costs were estimated to be $147 billion and the annual nationwide productive costs of the obesity related absenteeism range between $3.38 billion ($79 per obese individual) and $6.38 billion ($132 per obese individual)” (Adult Obesity Causes & Consequences, 2017).  This showed that we spend majority of the money we earn in the costs of medical help for obesity. Therefore, looking at the statistics Ohio possibly needs a health promotion programs and extra attention regarding obesity.

We further moved on to research hypertension. On hypertension, CDC indicated that, “During 2015-2016, the prevalence of hypertension was 29.0% and increased with age: age group 18-39, 7.5%, 40-59, 33.2%, and 60 and over, 63.1%” (Fryar, Ostchega, Hales, Zhang, & Kruszon-Moran, 2017). Consequently, hypertension remains an important issues in the United States because it increases the risk of other diseases such as cardiovascular disease. However, CDC indicated that hypertension remained unchanged from 1999-2000. According to the Ohio Department of Health (ODH), approximately 75 million adults in the United States have high blood pressure, including nearly one third of Ohio adults, and only about half of people with high blood pressure have it under control (High Blood Pressure, 2018). Furthermore, CDC quoted that, “High blood pressure was a primary or contributing cause of death for more than 410,000 Americans in 2014-that’s more than 1,100 deaths each day. Further, they stated that, “High blood pressure costs the nation $48.6 billion a year. This total includes the cost of health care services, medications to treat high blood pressure, and missed days at work” (High Blood Pressure Fact Sheet, 2016). With lack of physical activity, most of the time work demands increase blood pressure causing sedentary lifestyle. 

After studying shocking facts about obesity and hypertension, we further researched lack of physical activity. Physical activity is a vital element of a healthy lifestyle that improves the quality of life and certain health outcomes. The World Health Organization stated that, “The prevalence of insufficient physical activity rose according to level of income. High income countries had more than double the prevalence compared to low income countries for both men and women, with 32% of men and 42% of women being insufficiently physically active in high income countries compared to 13% of men and 19% women in low income countries” (Prevalence of insufficient physical activity, n.d.). This showed that the more educated individual is then lower physical activity they incorporate into their life compared to less educated individuals because the less educated individuals work long hours on their feet. Furthermore, CDC stated that, “low levels of physical activity are associated with $117 billion annually in health care costs” (Lack of Physical Activity, 2019). Looking at the data if employers were physically active then they would take less sick days off. After reading many articles and studies, Mr. Williams and I came to a conclusion that lack of physical activity leads to many high risk diseases which then leads to death.

Decision Committee Meeting #3:

After Mr. Williams and I researched for the epidemiological data related to the top three health issues that were selected by the employees and the members of the committee, we planned and conducted a third decision making meeting on the upcoming Thursday to present the data, facts, and information collected from the research. We both decided that the best way to present the data was through a power point presentation with all the facts and statistics that we came across. We thought this was the best way to get the point across because the committee members will not only listen, but visually see the changes caused by the health consequences. The power point would not last more than twenty to thirty minutes, and it would only describe the key points of the issues such as costs, incident rates, population, location, and the mortality rates. After sharing the key points and references from the PowerPoint, we decided to do an open discussion on what they were shocked about and what they found interesting based on the facts and figures provided or if they had any questions regarding the information. This allowed every member to participate and share their opinions. 

The group discussion went quite smoothly because everyone allowed each other to share their thoughts. Mia shah was intrigued with the fact that in all of the health issues, people spend lots of money to receive help, yet many people still reject the help and advice. Carly Weber then added that she agreed with the fact that people don’t use the benefits they receive, but then said that the most shocking portion of the presentation was that high income individuals have higher rate of inadequate physical activity compared to lower income individuals. The other members added on to Mia’s and Carly’s thoughts. After the discussion Mr. Williams and I decided to further narrow the health concerns we will do an anonymous vote. We told the members that they would vote for the target health concern by writing their choice on a piece of paper with an explanation and then place it in the jar placed on the front of the table. This would allow all the members to decide what they want without peer pressure and it wouldn’t cause any disputes. Once, every member placed their vote, we opened the chits and tallied the responses. After tallying all the responses, majority of the members chose obesity as their target issue. 

After letting the committee know the vote, everyone was pleased with the decision and were excited to move on to the next step. We discussed with the committee about the goals that they would like to accomplish and where the company wanted to be by the end of the intervention. We planned our next leadership meeting and ended our meeting with a health status goal that would be accomplished through the health promotion intervention.

Health Status Goal:

We would like to decrease the number of prevalence by obesity by 25% among the employees of Accenture by the end of one year.

 

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