Obesity Prevention and Healthy Life Styles Research

Obesity Prevention and Healthy Lifestyles
Name
Institution
Obesity Prevention and Healthy Lifestyles
Summary of Teaching Plan
This teaching plan is aimed towards presenting a comprehensive picture of the challenges and solutions that are linked to childhood obesity. The teaching plan highlights data that can be used in demonstrating the urgency of addressing the obesity menace. The plan also highlights the dramatic effect of obesity on children throughout their lives. The teaching plan has the ability to encourage healthier lifestyles among families and especially among young people who are the main target of this teaching plan.
This teaching plan is founded out of the realization that the basis for lifelong good health is laid in childhood. And outside the time that they are in school, nothing offers an immersive environment for children than the period that they spend in school. This means that schools are the best avenues through which young people can be taught about the importance of staying healthy and deal with obesity at the opportune time before problems emerge. One of the major channels that schools can utilize to positively affect health is education as this is the mission of every school. The current teaching plan is based on a school setting and is geared towards encouraging students to eat healthy and exercise as a way of eliminating obesity amongst the students.
Epidemiological Rationale for Topic
The current outbreak of obesity has been reported in various but not all regions globally. In the United States, 85% of children aged between 2-19 years are obese. This is way above the international trend where only 50% of this population is obese. According to WHO estimates, 1.6 billion people were reported as obese in 2010 with only 400 million of this population being adults. According to projections, 2.3 billion people will be obese by the year 2018. This problem will likely be concentrated in the West where the number of obese people has been rising steadily over the years (Prentice, 2006).
Obesity is attributed to the environment, genetic factors and human behavior. One thing that is certain is that obesity develops when there is a positive imbalance between energy intake and energy use, but the relative contribution of these factors is less understood. However, the available evidence on the issue supports the contribution of both increased energy intake and decreased energy usage in the obesity outbreak. Although some research has pointed to genetic factors as being a contributory factor in the obese epidemic, there is very little evidence to support this assertion and presently decreased energy use remains the only major contributory factor to obesity (Ogden, et al. 2006).
Obesity is linked to heightened risk of death. Some researchers have pointed out that the risk of death among patients who have never smoked; the risk of death goes up by 20% to 40% in overweight individuals but increases threefold in obese cases as compared to normal-weight salads. Obesity is also linked to heightened risk of lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and stroke. In addition to this, obesity is linked to various digestive ailments such as gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD...