Obesity Prevention



Nursing Fieldwork Project regarding Adult Obesity in Los Angeles County

Introduction

Obesity is referred to a medical condition in which the excess body fat has increased to an extent that it could have a negative impact on the health of an individual. The negative impact of obesity could also lead to reduced life expectancy along with increased health problems. An individual is considered to obese when his BMI (body mass index) is calculated to be more than 30 kg/m. Obesity is a very significant health disorder that is found in adults in the society and it needs to be treated effectively for the prevention of this disease and keeping the people healthy. The core focus of this essay is to discuss fieldwork done regarding the public health issue of adult obesity prevention in Los Angeles County, California. The essay will be largely structured in terms of the stages of the nursing process. It will pass through the phases of assessment, diagnosis, outcomes identification, planning, and evaluation.

Assessment

Again, the selected community for the current project consisted of the residents of Los Angeles County, California. According to the United States Census Bureau (USCB, 2013), this county is 4,752 square miles in size; and the county serves as home to 9,962,789 persons—a total amounting to over 26% of the population of the entire state of California. Perusing the census data a little closer, the following demographic data emerges: Non-Hispanic Whites constitute 27.6% of the population; Hispanics/Latinos constitute 48.1%; Blacks constitute 9.3%; and Asians constitute 14.2%. This means that Los Angeles County is clearly a minority-majority community, with over 70% of the population being accounted for by non-Whites and over 70% of that 70% itself being accounted for by Hispanics/Latinos (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2008). The census data also points out that the per capita income in Los Angeles County is $27,954, and that the rate of persons living below the poverty line is 16.3%. Thus, it can be said that the physical and social environment of Los Angeles County is characterized by fairly low general socioeconomic status and a great deal of poverty.

Within the context of this community, then, the current fieldwork focused on the public health issue of adult obesity. This has its background in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' (2013) Healthy People 2020 objectives regarding nutrition and weight status, including objective NWS-8 to "increase the proportion of adults who are at a healthy weight" and NWS-9 to "reduce the proportion of adults who are obese." Also, given the nature of the community under consideration, an initiative to prevent obesity may dovetail with an effort to reduce racial/ethnic healthcare disparities, insofar as a very large proportion of the residents of Los Angeles County belong to minority populations. In fact, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (LADPH, 2011) has generated fairly alarming findings in this regard. For example: "[A]dult obesity rates in the County increased from 13.6% in 1997 to ...