To address the problem of childhood obesity, the overall goal of this action plan will be to get parents on board with new healthier lifestyles and choices; realizing their children take after their own eating habits and will adapt accordingly. Involving the whole family in adopting a healthy practice will improve the chances their own habits will continue to pass these habits to the continuing generations.
The first recommendation is to establish healthier eating habits with the parents. As the parents start making the changes, the child will likely pick up the new eating habits; as children’s diets are greatly affected by the types of food eaten by their parents #cite. I propose having the parents of the obese children attend a seminar 1
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This approach is like Brown & Ogden's modelling and control theories of parental influence study #cite. Their study provided results the indicated both parents’ and children’s diets consisted of unhealthy snack foods and indicated a strong association between a parent's and their child's snack food intake for all snacks in general.
The participants would be given an explanation or purpose behind the study and informed that participation is voluntary at their school with consent of their principal. The children would then be given a consent form to take to their parents, having the explanation or purpose explained, with the emphasis that the participation is purely voluntary; returning said form to their teachers, who would then submit forms to principal for final checks and balances before being submitted for the study. Taking the initial procedure of Brown & Ogden even further to assure no ethical guidelines were crossed #cite.
The second recommendation would be to start a program with an emphasis on improving children's self-esteem, relationship with food and body image. Studies by Dr. Yoni Freedhoff #cite have resulted in a now Ontario Ministry of Health funded program called, Family Reset which was first started in The Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario as a special program for the most severe childhood obesity