4HW034 The Sociology of Public Health. Semester XXXXXXXXXX Assessment Preparation & assignment details Learning Outcome 1 To develop an understanding of the Social Model of health and the...

HOW CAN SOCIOLOGICAL APPROACHES HELP US TO UNDERSTAND PUBLIC HEALTH ISSUES?
Table of Contents
Introduction    3
1) Public Health Issue Selected    3
2) Sociological Model Selected    5
3) If Social Health Model Helps in Understanding Obesity    6
Way the Social Health Model Help in Understanding Obesity    6
Way the Social Model Help in Understanding Effects of Obesity on Individual, Population or Community    6
Recommendations by Social Model of Health in Reduction of Occu
ence of Obesity    6
Suggestions by Social Model of Health to Authorities in Responding to Obesity    7
Conclusion    7
References    8
Introduction
Public health can be act as a tool of protecting the community and improving the health of the community using various method such as education, research and policy making to prevent disease or injury. The main role pursued by public health committee is assessment of the situation, development of the policy and giving assurance to protect the community. Public health deals with some of the pressing concerns, which reduce the quality of life of the community. Some of the serious public health issues include obesity, mental illness, suicide, tobacco consumption and poor nutrition. Public health issues can be analysed and evaluated best under the lens of the sociological model. This following essay studies one of the public health issue under lens of one of the selected sociological models.
1) Public Health Issue Selected
The public health issue selected for this study is obesity. Obesity has become global burden. Every other person whether children, adult or elderly are suffering from obesity. Obesity is one of the dangerous diseases and pressing public health concern as a number of cases of obesity in children is rising every passing day. Obesity is responsible for causing many kinds of disease in an individual such as diabetes, cardiopulmonary disorders. It also increases the risk of sleep apnoea, respiratory disorder as well as it reduces the quality of life of every individual suffering from it (Sahoo et al. 2015). This disease is responsible for reducing the self-esteem of the people; some of them often end up in depression. There is poor stigma and societal views attached to it, which reduces the confidence level of the people suffering from.
It is very concerning that despite of various awareness programs related to the disorder, there are not any proper solution to the issue. According to World Health Organisation, the cases of the obesity have been increased triples since 1975. In 2016, around 2 billion adults at the age of 18 and above were overweight. Apart from this, 650 million people were obese, which means 13% of the world population is suffering from obesity. It is important to note that death due to obesity is higher than the death due to underweight. On the other hand, around 41 million children under the age of 5 were either overweight or obese in 2016. Around 340 million children and adolescent between the age of 5 and 18 were either obese or overweight (World Health Organisation, 2019).
As suggested by Allender et al. (2015), studies suggest that there are many factors responsible for the growing obesity. One of the main factors responsible is change in the lifestyle. Despite the disease is curable, yet it has been difficult in controlling the disease. Since the beginning of the 21st century, people are inclined more towards consuming fast food and sugary drinks. Fast food consists of high amount of fat and ca
ohydrate. Apart from this, small amount of sugar drink consists of very high amount of sugar, which increases the blood sugar level as well as ca
ohydrate level on the body. As an outcome of overconsumption of fat and ca
ohydrate, an individual suffers from obesity.
On the other hand, lack of physical exercise and physical movement is another factor, which prevents the body from reducing fat. As noted by Higginson, McNamara and Dall (2017), people are mostly engaged in office work, spending hours on computers as their field work had been reduced, so does their physical activities. On the contrary, children mostly play indoor games and video games or playing on mobile phones, instead of playing outdoor games. As an outcome, there are reduced physical activities among children. Thus, there is high fat consumption and low physical activities to present the fat from storing the body. This results in obesity.
Obesity can be diagnosed easily by conducting the physical observation of the individual. Apart from this, BMI index can be measured. There are some of the driving factors, which are responsible for...