Childhood Obesity Kristy Unkel Walden University Childhood obesity is a serious chronic medical condition that affects millions of children in our country. It is a rapidly growing public health concern in the United States. As obese children grow into adulthood, their risk for health problems such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes and hypertension also grows (“Overweight and obesity”, n.d.). Obesity is a difficult disease to manage since obese children are “predisposed to obesity for the rest of their lives” (“Overweight and obesity”, n.d.). According to the surgeon general, in the year 2000, “the total annual cost of obesity and complications in the United States was $117 billion and more than 300,000 Americans died from illnesses related to obesity” (“Overweight and obesity”, n.d.).
All there levels of government have developed a strategy plan to combat obesity and function as a map to defeating the epidemic of obesity. One main goal is to get Americans up and moving more, eating less, and educating people on better eating habits (South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, 2012). The three websites agree that being obese cause health problems to obese individuals. Diseases that shorten his or her lives such as Coronary heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, Hypertension, and strokes just to name a few (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Introduction One of the most challenging community and public health issues facing the United States today is childhood obesity. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in the past thirty years overweight children in the US have more than double in children and tripled in adolescents (“Childhood obesity facts”, 2013). The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) announced similar concerns and reported nearly one third of children and adolescents are overweight, and committed to an $8 million dollar commitment aimed at reversing this epidemic by 2015. The Healthy People 2020 objectives have shown convincing science supporting a healthy and nutritional diet lifestyle. These objectives are focusing on the health risk
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