HCM 320 Milestone 3- Childhood Obesity Letter to Stakeholders PDF

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HCM 320 Milestone 3: Childhood Obesity Letter to Stakeholders Aimee Malcom Online Southern New Hampshire University HCM-320: Healthcare Economics November 29, 2020

Dear Stakeholders, Childhood obesity is becoming a bigger and bigger problem now a days. As more and more people are having their jobs being affected by the Covid pandemic. Some parents are either having to deal with job loss or having their hours cut at work. With this job loss or cutting of hours it is leading to less money coming into the house and families are having to decided where the little money coming in is going and in some cases no money is coming in. This is leading to food insecurity for many special children. With what little money is available parents are not always buying the healthiest foods and may just be buying food that they can afford. This and other issues are leading to an epidemic of Childhood Obesity for many of our youth today. According to the CDC in a NCHS data brief 288 in October 2018, the figures show that children and teens 2-19 years old 18.5% roughly 13.7 million are being affected by obesity. The breakdown also shows that 13.9% of 2-5-year-olds, 18.4% of 6-11-year-olds and 20.6% of 1219-year-olds are now considered obese. Also, as you may expect obesity is more prevalent in the minority population, Hispanics (25.8%) and non-Hispanic blacks (22.0%) than in non-Hispanic whites (14.11%). The only minority group that was lower was non-Hispanic Asians (11.0%) (Hales et al., 2018). One policy that is being looked at is Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Excise Tax. What is a Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Excise Tax? This tax would be like the cigarette or nicotine tax that you see when some one buys cigarette or nicotine products. This tax would be assessed against any purchase of a sugar- sweetened beverage. This kind of tax is already being used in 8 U.S Jurisdictions and over 40 countries worldwide. These taxes have been put in place to deter consumption of sugary beverages that can lead to obesity in all special children. Money collected by the tax has then been used to invest and create programs to encourage physical activity and to

get children to become and stay active. This tax can lead to a reduction of obesity of time and help those that are already obese to get healthy. This in turn reducing g health care costs for both family and healthcare providers and organizations. Another proposed regulation that has been looked at is a ban of fast-food commercials geared to children. While the U.S. does not currently have any ban like this, other countries have enacted this type of ban and seen positive results in the rate of childhood obesity. I have mixed feeling on an all out ban as this may lead to lower childhood obesity rate but it would hurt the food industry thus leading more families into the position that many low income families already face. What I think is better and more and more fast-food restaurants have started to do this is to offer healthy alternatives to the traditional high calorie foods that were common in the past such as french fries. Thank you for taking your time out of you day to read my letter and I hope that this leads to further investigation and a change to help improve the health and lives of not only our children but also their children and the generations to come.

References Anderson, P. (2003, February). Economic Perspectives on Childhood Obesity. https://www.researchgate.net/search/publication. Backpack Program. (2006). http://theomahafoodbank.blogspot.com/p/backpackprogram.html. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2019, June 24). Childhood Obesity Facts. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020, September 2). Childhood Obesity Causes & Consequences. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/childhood/causes.html. Falbe, J. (2020, October 15). The ethics of excise taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages. Physiology & behavior. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7377978/. Hales, C. M., Carroll, M. D., Fryar, C. D., & Ogden, C. L. (2017, October 13). Products - Data Briefs - Number 288 - October 2017. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db288.htm. Kristensen, A. H., Flottemesch, T. J., Maciosek, M. V., Jenson, J., Barclay, G., Ashe, M., … Brownson, R. C. (2014, November). Reducing childhood obesity through U.S. federal policy: a microsimulation analysis. American journal of preventive medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4762259/....