Current intervention strategy: Soda taxes. An article says
that current soda taxes, which are usually not much higher than 4% in grocery
stores, do not have a huge affect on levels of soda consumption or obesity
rates. However, children who are already obese, children who are in a family
with a low income, or children who are a “minority” seem to be affected more
than normal weight children. The article discusses the affect that more taxes
could help other obesity prevention efforts. This intervention could be
included in the political determinant section because it is a law that has been
created in an attempt to reduce obesity rates.
One potential strategy that could address my problem would
be to create educational programs in cities in order to inform children and
their families about obesity. The programs could explain what obesity is, its
various causes, ways to prevent it and ways to reduce the rates once people are
already obese. This type of strategy could fall under the political determinant
section and could be primary, secondary and tertiary intervention, depending on
what stage the person being informed is at. Another strategy that could address
my problem would be creating a law making local schools provide healthier food
options in their cafeterias. Again, this strategy could fall under the
political determinant section because the government would be making this law
in an attempt to reduce the obesity rates in the nation. This strategy could be
primary, secondary and tertiary intervention as well, depending on what stage
of obesity the person is at. A final strategy to address my problem would
relate to the food deserts in various cities. The strategy would be to provide
the corner stores or various local markets with healthier food options for
their menus. This strategy could fall under the environmental determinant
section as well as the economic determinant section. It would be more tertiary
intervention.
If I were to order or prioritize the above strategies to
address my problem, I would implement the third strategy first (reducing food
deserts), the law for school cafeterias second, and finally the educational
programs third. I chose to order my strategies this way because I believe this
order will be most effective at addressing my problem directly. Although the
food deserts do not affect everyone, it is a big issue that causes obesity in
many cases. If the food deserts were reduced or even eliminated, the obesity
rates of many cities would decrease immensely, in children and adults both.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/29/5/1052.short
I really enjoyed your post this week. It is interesting seeing your paper coming together. I like all of your interventions, and am glad you included statistics on the soda tax not being effective. I agree you should focus on the third strategy as it is the most active, but all of your potential interventions seem very good and the combination of the three would probably be a very solid attack on the issue of obesity.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your post! First off, here is a quick primer on primary, secondary and tertiary prevention:
ReplyDeletePrimary prevention seeks methods to avoid the occurrence of disease, secondary methods seek to improve the treatment of existing disease and tertiary methods seek to reduce the negative impacts of existing disease. One could substitute "problem" for disease and think of ways to prevent the problem, identify and address the problem or reduce the consequences of that problem in the community.
I would argue that reducing food deserts is a goal, but not necessarily an intervention. The follow-up question is naturally, how will you reduce food deserts? You begin to address this question with corner store interventions. It is still not clear to me how you will achieve your goal of getting stores and food providers to make changes to their menu and provide healthier options in their community. If you want to focus on urban interventions I would suggest you narrow your PD to diabetes in urban environments. If you do not a reviewer might ask how urban food desert initiatives will address diabetes in other areas of the country.
Finally what was your methodology for selecting food desert intervention as the best intervention? The addition of a decision matrix can be helpful to address this question.