Introduction
The paper takes into consideration a Japanese cultural community. The survey concentrates on one household that has six members, which include father, mother, and four children. The household under survey comes from the middle class so they live a comfortable life. The family does are not cautious about their lifestyle judging by their feeding and physical activities. The family majorly feeds on red meat and is rarely engaged in any form of physical activity.
Traditional views of health and illness within the culture
The Japanese Community are more interested on curative medicine as opposed to preventive medicine. This is justified by the emphasis that traditional medicine accords curative medicine. One factor that shows that the culture does not embrace preventive medicine is the fact that the community does no pay attention to healthy eating and keeping fit. Majority of the households feed on a lot of red meat and junk foods, which are full of carbohydrates.
Influence of environment on health
The survey results points out to the fact that obesity is a major health issue in the community. The condition is attributed to the poor dietary habits of the population. Most households in the city do not eat health food, which are rich in vitamin and nutrients. On the contrary, they prefer junk foods rich in carbohydrates. Food rich in carbohydrates is responsible for the obese conditions amongst the people. According to Carriger (2011), the other factor that has largely contributed to the rampant cases of obesity is lack of exercise. Lack of exercise makes people to be vulnerable to obesity. In the recent past, the number of obese population has risen significantly. In fact, 40 percent of the population has obese conditions.
The survey reveals that 80 percent of population that does not engage in any physical activity stands a great chance of being obese. It is order that households engages in physical activities to reduce their chances of being obese. The health consequences of obesity are apparent; they make individuals to be prone to diseases such as cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke. The fact that there is high rate of obesity proves that the demand rate is high.
Health promotion intervention
There is urgent need to address this issue of obesity that threatens to wreck the community. When people are obese, they are less active and hence the productivity levels of such individuals goes down. This means that the economic performance of the community will also go down and as a result, there will be less employments leading to increased levels of poverty in the society (Callan, 2007). The hospital intends to build enough capacity to handle the situation at the hospital. The hospital has already purchased enough fitness equipment’s and employed enough experts that will ensure that the hospital’s resources are not overstretched. The company has also put in place enough experts to take care of the nutrition needs of the patients at the hospital.
In the recent past, the number of obese population has risen significantly. In fact, 40 percent of the population is obese conditions. Rosaline (2011) says that what is surprising is the fact that children and youth also form significant proportion of this statistics. Fifty (50) percent of the obese populations are the youth and children. Obesity is a great challenge that has bedeviled this otherwise economically sound city. The obese is truly a bad condition as it makes the victims to be prone to diseases such as high blood pressure, diabetes, asthma, heart disease, and cancer. Several surveys that have been conducted into the city points out to the fact that obesity is responsible for the high rate of mortality hat has been registered in the city in the recent past.
Strategies
Several drastic measures can be undertaken by the community to resolve the issue obesity. First, it is apparent that there exits racial disparity in risk factors for obesity and this is directly attributable to the lifestyle choices of such groups. It is important to have aggressive awareness campaign on the need to adopt healthy lifestyle to fight obesity and its associated lifestyle diseases. These campaigns must be availed in different translation so that all the different ethnic and racial groups get this critical message.
There must also be elaborate measures to ensure that community has enough health facilities that will help to manage and treat the many patients suffering from lifestyle disease. Lack of proper diet ranked among the causes of obesity. Stakeholders in nutrition and health sectors must ensure that the community has access to affordable healthy food as opposed to the junks, which only work to exacerbate their condition. The sporting organizations in the community needs to prove that they are equal to the challenge by putting in place enough sporting and fitness facilities as well as sporting activities within the community in a bid to increase the physical activities of the residents. This move will go a long way to help curb obesity, which is threatening to reverse the economic gains that the city has made so far.
The services that are aimed at addressing the obesity situation by the community take two critical approaches. The first approach involves nutrition and the second approach involves physical activity. It is worth noting that proper mechanisms should be taken to ensure that proper services are taken in place to address the situation. The community has to put in place a good fitness program that will ensure that the vulnerable groups which are the children have enough exercises that will help to make them regain normal weight (Nies 2011). On the other hand, there should be good nutritional guideline in place that will ensure that the children have a balanced diet that contains crucial minerals and vitamins. There should also be an aggressive campaign in place that will go a long way in ensuring that households are made aware of the programs of the hospital. Moreover the campaign is aimed at persuading households to embark on health living that involves exercise and health diet.
Conclusion
In the recent wake of high obesity in children there is need to formulate programs that addresses this situations. There must also be elaborate measures to ensure that city has enough health facilities that will help to manage and treat the many patients suffering from lifestyle disease. Lack of proper diet ranked among the causes of obesity. The Japanese Community are more interested on curative medicine as opposed to preventive medicine. This is justified by the emphasis that traditional medicine accords curative medicine and the way they show less regard to diet or physical fitness.
References
Callan, B. (2007). Adapting the windshield survey model to community health. Retrived on 25 September 2013 from education.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1937078/
Carriger. B. (2011). The Role of schoolS in preventing Childhood obesity. Retrieved on 25th September 2013 from http://www.medicinenet.com/obesity_weight_loss/miramar-fl_city.htm
Nies, M. (2011). Community/Public Health Nursing: Promoting the Health of Populations, 5th Edition. W.B. Saunders Company.
