Application of Epidemiology to Obesity Essay

fleshiness has been defined as a condition in which superfluity body fat has accumulated to an extent that wellness may be adversely affected. The classification of over fish and corpulency allows the identification of separates and groups at append chance of morbidity and premature death rate.1.Analyze the fleshiness job in the U.S. as comp atomic bite 18d to a nonher developed country in which the obesity problem is not as significant. entangle chemical elements such as suppurate, gender, race, socioeconomic status, and matrimonial status in your analysis. Hypothesize the reason why the rate of obesity is higher in the U.S. than the other country. Obesity has been such a battle for Americans since the earlyish 1980s. According to Fleming, major effort to reduce the harmonize of members who be sullen or obesity involves a strategic plan (Fleming, 2008).Obesity varies by age, gender, and by race-ethnic groups. A higher body weight is associated with an increased incidence of a number of conditions, including diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease, and nonalcoholic fatty coloured disease, and with an increased risk of disability. Obesity is associated with a modestly increased risk of all-cause fatality rate. However, the net effect of overweight and obesity on morbidity and death rate is difficult to quantify. It is credibly that a gene-environment interaction, in which genetically susceptible individuals serve to an environment with increased availability of palatable energy-dense foods and reduced opportunities for energy expenditure, contributes to the rate of flow high prevalence of obesity (The Epidemiology of Obesity, 2007). The unite States is not al one in experiencing increases in the prevalence of obesity.Similar increases watch been reported from a number of other countries and regions of the world. For example, in England, the prevalence of obesity (BMI is greater than or rival to 30) among women 2534 classs of ag e increased from 12% to 24% in only 9 years between 1993 and 2002. In Portugal, increases in overweight among school-age children also know been found. Less-developed countries also have seen increases in obesity (The Epidemiology of Obesity, 2007). Among preschool-age children in urban areas of China, the prevalence of obesity increased from 1.5% in 1989 to 12.6% in 1997(The Epidemiology of Obesity, 2007). Differences in the prevalence of obesity between countries in Europe or between race-ethnic groups in the United States tend to be more(prenominal) say for women than for men.For example, in Europe, the WHO Multinational Monitoring of trends and determinants in cardiovascular disease study, which garner data from 39 sites in 18 countries, found the prevalence of obesity was similar for men across all sites (The Epidemiology of Obesity, 2007). For women, however, there were marked differences in prevalence between sites, with higher values for women from Eastern Europe. Simila rly, in the United States, there are marked differences in the prevalence of obesity by race-ethnic group for women but not for men. According to the U.S. obesity trend, the southern states have the highest prevalence of obesity out of all the fifty states. The CDC stated that more than one-third of U.S. adults (35.7%) are orotund. Approximately 17% (or 12.5 million) of children and adolescents aged 2-19 years are obese (Overweight and Obesity, 2011).2.Compare obesity rates and obesity-related health business equals in your state to all of the U.S. Recommend how your state can treat obesity as a threat to general health. As stated above, tabun is one of the southern states that have a high prevalence mortality rate. The greatest problem with the statistical linkages between body mass and mortality is that other confounding factors are not con lieured, leaving little can for drawing causal inferences. Most epidemiological studies estimating the relationship between body weight and mortality do not control for fitness, exercise, diet quality, weight cycling, diet drug use, economic status, or family history.Furthermore, in studies that control for somewhat of these factors, the data are usually self-reported and thus of extremely questionable reliability. tabun ranks seventeenth most obese state in the nation. Obesity is one of the biggest public health challenges. Millions of Americans still face barriers like the high embody of tidy foods and lack of access to safe places to be physiologicly active. there has been a significant increase in health care equal in accordance to obesity. The annual cost of obesity in tabun is estimated at $2.1 billion ($250 per Georgian each year), which includes direct health care costs and befuddled productivity from disease, disability, and death (indirect costs) (Georgia data Summary, 2008). Treatment of this plaguey would be rather difficult.At a federal level, the new health reform law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, has the potential drop to address the obesity epizootic through a number of stripe and wellness provisions, expand coverage to millions of uninsured Americans, and create a genuine backup stream through the creation of the Prevention and Public wellness Fund. People who are overweight or obese have a higher risk for death than people of optimal (normal) weight. An estimate of excess mortality is called the population attributable risk ( hit). PAR is an estimate of the proportion of deaths caused by a particular risk factor, in this case, overweight and obesity.The PAR represents the proportion of deaths in a population that would be eliminated if the risk factor were removed from the population. The PAR for overweight and obesity is the fraction of all deaths that would not slip by if everyone were of optimal (normal) weight. The PAR from overweight and obesity is estimated using the prevalence of overweight and obesity in Georgia and the rela tive risk for decease among overweight and obese persons compared with normal weight persons. The risk varies by age and sex. In Georgia, approximately 10% of the total number of deaths each year is attributable to overweight or obesity, indicating that or so 6,700 Georgians dies annually because they are overweight or obese. About 1,500 (22%) of the excess deaths occur among people who are overweight, and 5,200 (78%) occur among those who are obese (Georgia Data Summary, 2008).3.Suggest how politics of this issue will balk your ability as an epidemiologist to function your community and / or state skunk with the issue of obesity. The medical costs of obesity in the U.S. have been estimated at $75 $100 billion a year. The estimate for Georgia is about $2.1 billion per year, or $250 per Georgian per year. Excess body fat is associated with both(prenominal) direct costs such as diagnostic and treatment run related to overweight and obesity, and indirect costs such as lost wages and reduced productivity due to illness, disability, and premature death (Georgia Data Summary, 2008). As an epidemiologist, the extra funds would not be available to help those individuals that are obese and want to lose the weight. The U.S. is already spending a large amount of money through medical cost for those obese individuals.A organisation grant to help individuals may even bemuse refused because again, the funding is coming from the government. Politics would not want to provide funding for a start of a program because it is cost efficient and could be expensive. We are now at a point where governments are latterly aware of the threat that rising obesity poses to population health as well as to societys economic well-being and the vivid environment. The awareness of the size and complexity of the problem is also evolving into an awareness of the destiny for multiple actions to achieve a high enough dose of solutions. there is widespread agreement that a multi-sector ial response will be ask from governments, the private sector, civil society and the public.4.Propose four (4) new policies or laws that the government can implement to address the obesity problem in the U.S. Include the implications of those policies or laws on people, health insurance, health care providers, businesses, and the food industry. In an ideal world, governments would have been monitoring population obesity trends and have acted early to implement the actions needed to halt and reverse the obesity epidemic. However, this is not the parking area reality and, indeed, only a handful of countries have monitoring systems in place to detect changes in the prevalence of obesity and its risk factors. As stated above in question number two a new health reform law has to address the obesity epidemic through different wellness, and providing coverage to the millions of Americans. Government could also issue a community transformation grant to individuals that have transformed th eir obese bodies into healthy balanced bodies.Policies to reduce greenhouse emissions, such as corporate and individual century trading, would be powerful stealth interventions for obesity prevention. Congestion taxes, car-free cities, public transport growth and other urban planning options will have increased physical activity as a beneficial side effect and thus contribute to obesity prevention. Reducing the carbon cost of food could also have an effect on energy aspiration since many of the energy dense foods which promote obesity tend to be more processed, packaged foods in other words, higher in carbon costs.5.Assess and address the causes which have made obesity rates increase for the yesteryear decade. Over the past three decades, obesity has increase significantly. While the hold reasons for increased global obesity were still undetermined, experts said changing habits were likely contributors. Diets are different than they were 30 years ago, and modern engineering has r educed physical activity. Developing countries now have a lot of the conveniences that are commonplace in wealthier nations. There are also an increase of automobile, which we are widely dependent on and less walking or bicycling. In conclusion, the drivers of this pandemic that is now affecting rich and poor countries also must be global in nature and relatively young in onset. While biological hard-wiring explains the potential for the development of obesity, it cannot explain the laic trends in obesity prevalence.Humans have, for good survival reasons, evolved a biota that is designed to maximize energy intake and minimize physical activity. We try and enjoy good tasting food ( in particular sweet, fatty and salty foods) and we search to reduce the effort needed to do work (by designing machines and technology to do it for us). While these are powerful factors, our biology has not changed over the last 30 years. What has changed dramatically is the environment around us esp ecially the easy availability of foods and energy-saving machines that feed those biological desires. It is the increasingly obesogenic environments which are promoting especially excessive energy intake but also reduced physical exertion that are driving secular trends.