Question

Your local health department received a grant to create a new initiative designed to decrease obesity rates. Your health department wants to build a team of teachers, parents, community leaders, and public health professionals to develop an intervention. In your opinion, which (if any) cognitive and affective methods would be useful? Why?

Answer 1

In my opinion, the idea of getting teachers, parents , community leaders and public health workers together into a team inorder to intervene plans to decrease obesity rate is a very brilliant and workable idea. As we all know that a teacher is considered to be a mentor in people's life either it is a child or his parents, whatever a teacher speaks or does influences them deeply. Hence it is very useful to include a teacher in the team for a good result. He or she can easily influence the parents about the increase in the obesity rate in children as well as adults. A teacher can also play a role of a counselor where he or she can counsel the person who has been into depression or is in a verge to get into it.

Parents as a team member also provides support to fulfill the target. Parents look into each others lives inorder to learn of how they are improving in their parenting and in which way they are better and tend to follow the things which they feel are better. Hence if a parent is included in the team she can be a role model for almost all the parents in order to identify the unhealthy lifestyle and food habits that can be a trigger for obesity in a child as well as an adult.

Community leader can be very much influencing in the life of common people. They will follow the pathway of their leader and try to take the way that their leader has chosen for them. If the leader of a certain community teaches them about the importance of controlling of the increasing obesity , they tend to listen to him better than other people including their primary health personnel.

Public health professionals can also be a useful medium to influence people to follow their steps because these are the people who are more interactive and close to the common people. They are always mingling with the people of community and know about their lifestyles or their habits which makes it easier to influence the people on changing their behaviour and lifestyle patterns.

The most useful cognitive and effective method is through media. The media is a source of providing information to the people . They tend to trust the words which are provided via media. Mostly the children and the teenagers are affected with it. Hence if the media is used wisely and in a better way to influence the people about the obesity, the risk faced from it and the way to solve it, the people will try to follow those words of the media. People nowadays are mostly addicted towards their screens which makes them more and more attracted to things which are shown by them, including food and lifestyles which might be considered dangerous to them but if a good message is sent through the screen which they are addicted to then it will be an affective and most useful way of decreasing the chance of getting obesity in the people.