Topic > A social determinant of health affecting public well-being in Preston, UK

IndexContextEpidemiologySocial determinant of healthNational and local strategiesConclusionReferencesPeople's sense of safety, health, social engagement and general well-being are generally influenced by where they live (Linda , 2015). The A-2018 report, titled: “Obesity: Preventing and Managing the Global Epidemic”, by the World Health Organization (WHO), states that most of these factors can be collectively grouped under appropriate social determinants of health. Social determinants of health are defined as the environmental conditions in which people are born, live, play, work, learn, worship, and age, which largely influence their functioning, health, and quality of life. In this context, the physical, social, and economic conditions that occur in various contexts such as school, workplace, church, and neighborhood are referred to as “places.” This article focuses on lifestyle factors and specifically discusses obesity as one of the major contemporary social determinants in relation to public health and people's general well-being, seeking to unravel the global health-related implications of obesity. It further restricts statistical evidence to the national level in an attempt to ascertain the level of negative impacts that obesity has on public health. In further detail and with respect to the topic, the document sheds light on Preston, the possible economic constraints and widely adopted lifestyles, which are believed to have largely contributed to the obesity rate in the area. The document also aims to analyze all the intervention approaches (both at national and local level) that have so far been adopted to mitigate the triggers of this social determinant. The beneficial and non-malefic aspects of these approaches are also carefully examined so as to give credence to such measures or discredit them in terms of their sincerity of relevance and usefulness. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay ContextObesity is defined as an excessive or abnormal accumulation of fat in the body to such a volume that it has a tendency to impair health (Ranjiani, Mehreen, Pradeepa, Anjana, Garg, Anand, and Mohan 2016). The World Health Organization (WHO 2018) lists any body mass index (BMI) above 29 as obese for adults. According to the same report, the global obesity rate has nearly tripled since 1975. In 2016, approximately 1.9 billion people aged 18 years and older were overweight, of which more than 650 million were completely obese (WHO 2018) . Rightly so, in 2016 39% of people belonging to these age groups were overweight and 13% were particularly obese. The same report also mentions the prevalence of obesity among children and adolescents, which increased from 4% in 1975 to approximately 18% in 2016. Over 41 million children aged 5 years and younger were overweight (WHO 2016 ) and, in slight extension, in this age group, in 2016 over 340 million children and adolescents aged between 5 and 19 were overweight or completely obese. Preston is the 50th largest city in England, a non-metropolitan borough in Lancashire, with a population of over 142,000 people (Abbas, 2017). The city of Preston is well represented in the education sector across England and can be considered proportional to national statistics, but in the healthcare sector Preston takes a negative turn compared to national statistics. According to Collins, Jones, Patel and Scott (2015), supported by Public Health England (2016), inPreston's 2011 census of general health statistics revealed that the proportion of residents rated as very good in terms of health was lower than the national average. While the national average was at 62.7%, Preston was at 54.6%. In contrast, the percentage of those rated in poor health was 13.1% for Preston, while the national average was 9.4% (Farha, 2017). This development suggests that Preston may have vastly underperformed in the areas of campaigning for health awareness and taking necessary intervention measures. Obesity is known to be a major contributor to health problems in Preston (Farha, 2017). In response to this, the World Health Organisation, government and non-government agencies have developed a range of intervention measures to curb obesity and other social determinants in Preston. These intervention approaches mainly aimed to reduce socioeconomic inequalities and reduce weight gain among low-literacy and low-income adults through various awareness, diet and physical activity campaigns (WHO, 2014). EpidemiologyAccording to the World Obesity Federation (WOF 2019), obesity is a chronic disease. In the 2019 Journal publication, titled: “Obesity – a chronic relapsing progressive disease process,” the World Obesity Federation confirms obesity as a chronic, relapsing disease because it fits the epidemiological model of disease processes except the disease agent in his case it's diet. related rather than microbe (WOF 2019). Bray, Kim, and Wilding (2017) had previously made suggestions to support this claim. It has been argued that obesity is best considered a disease because doing so will help remove the feeling that obese individuals are solely responsible for their excess body weight and this will have a great impact on efforts to effectively arrest the causes. According to a 2018 report from the World Health Organization, titled “Key Learning on Health in All Policies Implementation from Around the World,” approximately 2 billion adults are overweight, of which an estimated 650 million people are considered to have obesity, with BMI > 30 kg/m2. This overweight population figure equates to approximately 39% of adults aged 18 and over, while 13% are obese. If nothing is done to change the current trend, it is estimated that the number of overweight adults will rise to an average of 2.7, while the number of obese could rise to 1 billion by 2025 (Bray et al., 2017) .In the UK, obesity represents a huge contemporary health problem, which many authorities believe to be among the leading preventable causes of death (Andrew, 2016). It is for this reason that former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt called the alarming rate of obesity, especially among adolescents, a national emergency (Andrew, 2016). In 2014 approximately 84% of the adult population in England was considered overweight (Sarah, 2016). According to Wang, Mcpherson, Marsh & Gortmaker (2011), up to 11 million additional adults in the UK could be classified as obese before 2023, which could translate into up to 668,000 additional cases of diabetes mellitus, 130,000 cases of cancer , 461,000 cases of heart disease and stroke and this could lead to additional medical costs that could amount to £2 billion a year. Similarly, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) conducted research in 2014 to ascertain the true prevalence rate of obesity among children in England. According to Linda (2015), approximately 17% of children aged 2 to 15 were completely obese. The report lists Preston as one of the cities with the highest prevalenceof obesity. Using Public Health England (PHE) health profile tools alongside the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QoF) disease registers, Abbas Farha (2017) achieved an understanding of the key health issues affecting the population of Preston, including l Obesity has figured prominently. Obesity is a major driver of heart disease, stroke and diabetes in Preston (Farha, 2017). There is a high level of deprivation in Preston, with over 91,759 individuals living in the neighborhoods (LSOA), which is widely considered to be one of the most deprived in the whole of England. In the district, approximately 20% of its adolescents live in low-income families (Farha,2017). Social Determinant of Health Worldwide, the increasing rate of obesity is influencing many health challenges (Swinburn, Sacks, Hall, McPherson, Finegood, Moodie & Gortmaker, 2011). Obesity is closely associated with a number of diseases, including type 2 diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and stroke, cancer, sleep apnea, osteoarthritis, fatty liver disease, kidney problems, and pregnancy problems such as high levels of blood sugar during pregnancy (Swinburn et al. al., 2011). Lack of physical activity, combined with excessive consumption of high-energy foods, are the main factors that lead people to develop obesity (WHO 2017). It is basically caused by an imbalance between calories consumed and calories expended (WHO 2018). Studies also show that lack of sleep, sedentary behavior, and high stress levels are also major contributing factors (Patel & Hu 2008). These things can happen together in a dynamic way and at different levels of intensity over a day, a year of life. These behaviors, in turn, are influenced by a number of factors, which include genetic, biological, and psychological factors (Patel & Hu 2008). Decades earlier, people performed manual labor such as agriculture, construction, transportation, etc., but in the contemporary world, technology has significantly removed manual labor from our daily lives through the help of machines and this it has automatically resulted in excess weight for people who have a little difficulty limiting themselves from consuming more energy foods than they can expend (Swinburn et al., 2011). In the study of the main determinants behind obesogenic behaviors, the neighborhood and the community were at the center of consideration (Diez-Roux and Folgueras, 1997). Social factors such as social networks and segregation are also thought to impact neighborhood social interaction through their ability to influence where and with whom they live, shaping how people perceive their circumstances, and shaping available resources (Swinburn et al., 2011). The content and quality of homes, facilities and infrastructure in neighborhoods have a major impact on people's behavior and health outcomes (Swinburn et al., 2011). A good understanding of the relationship between lifestyle and obesity goes a long way in adding effectiveness to any intervention measure an organization intends to introduce. In Preston, as stated by Hill (2018), 1 in 5 children outside of primary school are obese. The question has been raised of the exact factors that distinguish Preston from the high rate of obesity. National and local strategies In 2017, the World Health Organization, in collaboration with several other global bodies, held a conference in South Australia to formulate international health policy ( WHO 2017). The commission discussed extensively the growing impact of social determinants and how these could hinderShanghai Declaration on Health Promotion in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (SDG). At the center of the agenda was how to curb the health impacts of obesity. Rose (1994) argued that rather than focusing on high-risk individuals, such as those whose conditions were fueled by genetic factors, it was much more plausible to focus on the majority of others whose conditions were fueled by socioeconomic factors. If lack of money was the root cause of some medical conditions, it means that the availability of money can correct most of them. Based on the outcome of arguments such as this, the UK Government is adopting different levels of intervention measures to reduce the threat of obesity across England, targeting more areas with greater socioeconomic challenges (WHO 2014), which it defines correctly the category in which Preston falls in light of today's rating. All these are the intervention measures envisaged at an international level. At a national level, the British government has, at various times, reached out to respective parts of the country in an attempt to integrate plans which, if implemented, could significantly mitigate the growing rate of obesity. For example, the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, during a national broadcast in 2017, published by the Department of Health and Social Care (2018), stated that obesity is increasingly causing many diseases among school-age children, including including type 2 diabetes and liver problems. problem. He further said that the government has started its intervention through an awareness campaign. According to the Department of Health and Social Care (2018), the aim was to educate people, particularly parents, about possible ways in which they could avoid childhood obesity among their children by giving them the right diet and helping them to be physically active and the implementation was done at national level. Obesity-related cases are estimated to cost up to £6.1 billion directly to the NHS and £27 billion per year to society at large (DHSC 2018). After numerous other intervention measures, the government took its anti-obesity campaign to grassroots across the UK in 2016 (DHSC 2018). The beneficence and non-maleficence of the different approaches adopted by different bodies in the fight against obesity have been reviewed in an attempt to measure their levels of effectiveness. Studies have shown that different individuals have different abilities to adapt to and accept medical procedures (Perryman and Sidoti 2015). However, the benefits of the adopted preventive approaches, which include grassroots obesity control campaigns, outweigh the visible disadvantages (Perryman and Sidoti 2015). For example, this will reduce the costs of treating complications resulting from obesity. This development will be reflected in the living standards of individuals and will help government agencies save money that would otherwise go towards treating diseases. The focus seems to be more on stopping childhood obesity than adult obesity. This is because the prevalence of obesity in children and adolescents appears to be stabilizing now more than ever (Perryman and Sidoti 2015). In this path, the different intervention programs do not only benefit those who have money and can pay, but capture every individual in need (Abbas 2017). Among the many known approaches to mitigate the impacts of obesity, particularly in Preston's obese child population, is decentralized pharmacotherapy. This process involves the use of drugs to control the accumulation of fat in the body (Abbas 2017). This approach is applied only in rare cases, especially when diet and exercise do not givethe desired results. It is used to prevent affected people from developing complications and has helped reduce the number of obese individuals across the UK (Abbas 2017). Others are family-based behavioral treatment (FBBT) and, in rare cases, surgery (De Godoy -Matos et al., 2009). The collaborative efforts of several participating institutions have significantly facilitated the process of selecting the right treatment options for patients and implementing them. Even if the use of pharmacotherapy in the treatment of childhood obesity, according to (Diaz and Folgueras 2014), sometimes presents serious disadvantages, it still represents the most adequate response to some difficult cases of obesity such as when the patient has difficulty following the diet recommended. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get a Custom Essay Conclusion Obesity has been widely recognized as one of the major social determinants of health. Some known causes are diets and lack of physical activity. Other important influencers include environmental factors such as the people you are in contact with, residential facilities - housing and public services; as well as infrastructure. A significant portion of the world's population becomes obese at some point in their lives. Obesity is known for its tendency to drive affected people to a number of medical complications and diseases including stroke, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, etc. As a result of such negative findings, several international governmental and non-governmental organizations have outlined measures to combat obesity down to its causes. Among these international bodies, the World Health Organization (WHO) stands out. Most of these international bodies and agencies have collaborated, in various capacities, with governments and institutions of different nations in an attempt to reduce the impact of obesity in those nations. In the UK, the negative impacts of obesity are as severe as in other European countries, for which several categories of both government-sponsored and non-government intervention mechanisms have been introduced. These mechanisms largely focus on areas with the greatest environmental challenges. One such area is Preston City. Studies have revealed that Preston has one of the largest numbers of children living with low-income parents in the UK. Furthermore, it ranks high in other environmental challenges. To achieve effective results, some Lancashire-based bodies have made great strides to educate the population about the disadvantages of eating more calories than the body actually needs. Beneficence and nonmaleficence embrace the safety of life and well-being of individuals; more importantly, it impacts economic benefits for the state and affected individuals. References Abbas, F. (2017). Business intelligence from the public health intelligence team. Lancashire County Council. Retrieved from: https://www.lancashire.gov.uk/media/898285/greater-preston-ccg-mini-summary-profile-2017-18.pdfBoseley, S. (2016). Chicken shop millet and how Britain got fat. The Guardian. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jan/28/chicken-shop-mile-britain-fat-cheap-food-obesityBray, G., Kim, K., & Wilding, J. ( 2017). Obesity: a chronic relapsing progressive disease process. A position statement from the World Obesity FederationCollins, S. Jones, D. Patel, A., & Scott, D. (2015). Secondary data analysis on health behavior strategic needs joint assessment. Retrieved from: https://www.lancashire.gov.uk/media/901334/health-behaviours-jsna-secondary-data-analysis-february-2015-updated.pdfDe Godoy-Matos,: