What Is the Next Step?
Based on your summary of the problems in Weymouth, how should they proceed?
Who are the stakeholders?
How might these concerns be dealth with in the town of Weymouth?
What interventions might improve the health of the adults in Weymouth?
What interventions might improve the health of children?
Who should take the lead?
What are the next steps?
Possible stakeholders and their reactions:
- State and local physicians feel that this is a medical problem that is best dealt with one-on-one between patients and their providers.
- A local business owner, specializing in health and nutrition, says that "People need to be educated about the benefits of healthy eating and exercise, and we need to motivate people to adopt healthy habits."
- The superintendent of schools says, "We need more resources for health education and physical education in schools."
- Local restaurant owners say, "I run a business. I provide what people want and what they will buy."
- Health teachers in the school system say, "The students don't listen. I think I know what is healthy, and we try to tell them, but they don't listen."
- A parent says, "I'm at a loss. Everyone in my family is constantly busy and on the run. It's tough to plan meals for all of us. And besides the recommendations for healthy eating keep changing."
- The woman who chairs the local board of health wants to propose a town ordinance that bans fast food restaurants in Weymouth.
- A selectman wants to propose a town tax on fast foods and on sugary soft drinks.
Is Overweight/Obesity a Health Problem?
The increased prevalence of obesity has garnered much attention in the scientific literature and the lay press, but there are some who believe that the level of concern is vastly exaggerated, and that the notion of an "obesity epidemic" is largely a myth. Paul Campos has championed the position that obesity as a health problem is vastly overblown. When he visited the Boston University School of Public Health for a symposium, he was interviewed by BU Today. Below is a quote from the article that appeared in BU Today.
From BU Today:
"Campos, the author of the controversial 2004 book The Obesity Myth: Why America's Obsession with Weight Is Hazardous to Your Health, has been a vocal critic of what he considers a self-defeating war on fat that has no basis in science and can have devastating consequences for women.
Campos argues that the health risks of obesity have been exaggerated by medical and public health professionals and the $50 billion a year weight-loss industry. Against a cacophony of voices calling attention to weight—from the CDC to First Lady Michelle Obama—he concludes that the health risks associated with body fat have been overblown, save for a small minority of people who are at the extremes of body weight.
Studies support the idea, says Campos, that a moderately active, moderately overweight person is likely to be healthier than someone who is thin but sedentary. He sees cardiovascular and metabolic fitness as more significant keys to health than a person's body mass index (BMI)."
America's Moral Panic Over Obesity
Bicknell Symposium 2013
The videos below are from the the BUSPH Bicknell Symposium in 2013, which featured Paul Campos, a lawyer who believes that the obesity epidemic in s a myth, and Frank Hu, a physician/epidemiologist, who believes that the increased prevalence of obesity its a health problem that should be addressed. There is also a question and answer session that follows.
The first video is 37 minutes long, but you can skip the first four minutes of introduction. The second video is 18 minutes long, and the third one (question and answer panel) is 19 minute long. Review at least the first two presentations and compose your answers to the questions below. Post your comments in the Blackboard discussion forum provided for this exercise.
- Which speaker was most entertaining?
- Which speaker was most factual and evidence-based?
- Which was most logical? Were either of the to main speakers paralogical, meaning that they presented truisms that were not logically connected?
- Did either talk contain logical fallacies. Take a look at the online module on "Evaluating Persuasive Messages". Logical fallacies are defined on page 3. Were any of the fallacies listed below employed?
- Begging the question
- False analogy
- Either /or
- Common sense
- Hasty generalization
- Relevance fallacies
- Rhetorical questions
- Is confounding a potential problem in sorting these questions out? How so? Which speaker best addresses this?
- Which speaker has the best skills for identifying the important associations and causal relationships here?
- How might each of the speakers have improved the effectiveness or the impact of their message?
What Is the Evidence that Overweight or Obesity is Associated With Adverse Health Effects ?
You need to become adept at searching for evidence. One of the best online places to search for health related information is "PubMed" which is maintained by the US National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health.
Go to PubMed and perform the following search.
In the search box at the top enter the following search terms: obesity health effects. You should get over 22,000 articles that match. Now let's refine the search.
Beneath the search box is a pop-down menu called "Sort by:" Click on this and select "Best match". This will sort them according the best relevance to your search terms.
On the left there is a list of additional parameters by which we can refine our search. First select "Free full text" and then select "Humans".
You can now begin to scroll through the list of articles looking for those that may have relevance to answer the question as to whether overweight or obesity are associated with health problems and how this information might be relevant to the Town of Weymouth.
Compose a letter of less than 300 words that summarizes the findings from your review of the literature and their potential relevance to Weymouth residents. You need not formulate recommendations on how to address these issues. You will be asked to do that later, after you have been provided with additional information.