Introduction
Obesity in the UK is something of a prevalent health issue within contemporary society, with more and more people becoming what could be classified as ‘obese’. Certainly, the detrimental effects of the disease are not only constrained to individual and collective health outcomes, with further implications arising for contemporary health policy and nursing practice. For this reason, addressing obesity should be perceived as a whole system (or known in other circles as ‘holistic’) approach that incorporates issues of education, justice, fiscality (financial aspects of the situation), health and food labeling, as well as being familiar with the role of stakeholders in addressing it (i.e. the government, NHS and possibly schools and educational institutions if the interventions are aimed towards young people).
Theory and research around public health
In terms of empirical evidence there has been a vast amount of it which has been amassed, commencing with the Health of the Nation report in 1992 for which the aims and objectives were missed by 400 percent (an irrefutable indicator of perhaps the efficacy of initiatives to address obesity or possibly the pluralistic nature of the targets) and continuing with the aptly-named 2007 Foresight Report which made the startling (and worrying prediction) that approximately half of the people in UK will be obese in 2050, with to the financial outlay required to cover this a monumental £50 billion (i.e. interventions, surgical procedures and other such provisions) (National Obesity Forum, 2014).
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The Health and Social Care Information Centre in England were forthcoming with the outcomes of their research, which discovered that the amount of the general population who exceed what is deemed to be the normal range of Body Mass Indices increased significantly during 1993-2011 (with the longitudinal nature of the study verifying its reliability to a certain extent). Specifically considering the effects on young people,31 per cent of boys and 28 per cent of girls aged between 2 and 15 have been classified as being overweight or obese (Department of Health, 2011). This could possibly been explained by the fact that young people, who have been prolifically highlighted in the media as being becoming overweight, are part of a generation of children who are more used to interacting with computers and digital appliances rather than exercising in the natural environment. Prensky (2001) terms this generation of young people as being ‘digital natives’, in that they are so acclimatised to a world of technology, that they cannot envisage existing without it. These findings are mirrored in various studies regarding adult obesity undertaken studiously by the University of Glasgow (2014), who unsurprisingly discovered that people tend to become heavier as they age, possibly due to decreased physical activity or other health impediments (i.e. arthritis) which may curtail their mobility and levels of activity. Leeds Metropolitan University also focused on levels of childhood obesity (Public Health England, 2014). A number of Government initiatives, policies and projects are in the public domain presently, with the effectiveness of these in addressing the issue of obesity being discussed in the next section.
Models of public health
Two of the most prominent and well-publicised projects that target the problem of obesity are the Change4Life programme and the Public Health Responsibility Deal. The Change4Life programme distributes guidance to the population (normally through the medium of advertising or brochures)regarding the importance of healthy eating and sport activities. Through this programme, families are encouraged to collectively change their lifestyle through engaging in an increased amount of physical activity and by decreasing their intake of fat, salt, sugar or alcohol (Department of Health, 2011). Despite the family-orientated nature of this advertising campaign, it paled in comparison with the magnitude of the obesity problems in the UK, ultimately being ineffective.
The Public Health Responsibility Deal was founded after the previously mentioned 2007 Foresight Report as an acknowledgment of obesity as a serious issue in the UK. It is targeted at businesses becoming more aware of their role in influencing the health of the population through being more explicit and less transparent in their manufacturing and labeling of products. Therefore, businesses are encouraged to list the nutritional information on products and menus overtly, as well as reducing
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