An intervention is a means to health change. It is planned and targets a specific group such as the preschool children involved in the study. The study targets, eating and activity habits that are linked to the inappropriate weight gain, formed in early childhood. This study also targets health promotion as a process to make the preschoolers strengthen control and make the level of the general health state better. The intervention will allow them to reach a state of total mental, social and physical well being to allow them to reach their aspirations in future, satisfy their needs and cope with the environment. Health in this case is viewed as a positive concept that is a resource for everyday life and not just an object for living. To the preschoolers, this intervention will allow them to live a fuller life (Potvin, McQueen & Hall 2008).
The tooty –fruity veggie program was created as a one year strategic health program that was piloted in 2006, but was expanded to more preschools to reduce incidences of overweight and obese children in preschools. It is aimed at increasing the number of children who eat nutritionally adequate diets and those participating in physical activities. During the Ottawa charter, basic strategies for health promotions were prioritized and as for the case in the article, advocacy was the first area that was prioritized (Kickbusch, 2008). To improve health, the intervention in the article uses a one year strategic health program to advocate for strategies that will not only be used now but also in future. The strategies for advocacy include, developing a nutritional policy that caters for the nutritional needs of preschoolers and the potential to developing childhood weight problems (Muto, Nakahara & Nam 2011).
Another advocacy strategy used by the intervention is training of staff and parent workshops on healthy eating and the importance of physical activities. The intervention targets the people who can make change in the preschoolers’ diets and physical activities and this way, it limits the occurrence of future weight problems for the preschoolers. Another program used to advocate good health is the regular fundamental movement sessions that have been included as a part of preschool curriculum to enable them develop strategies of coping with weight gain. Preschoolers are also provided with free manuals, children cooking classes and food DVDs that teach practical ways of improving children eating habits and physical activities.
Another basic strategy, prioritized in the Ottawa charter was enabling and empowering individuals to control factors that affect their health so as to be able to attain the highest quality of life achievable (McQueen & Potvin,2007). According to the strategy, all people have a right and are enabled of getting an absolute health security by means of having an access to all the necessary information, the skills which are gotten during the life and all the correspondent opportunities for them to know what to do in case of emergency. In this intervention, strategies used have a framework for organizing change in food habits that will slow down obesity and weight gain among preschoolers (McQueen & De Salazar 2011).
The strategies are aimed at helping the children achieve full health not only now but also in future by avoiding habits that will make them gain weight. The strategies being used now, provide a platform through knowledge where the children are being shown how to positively use dietary and physical alterations in their lives to avoid being overweight. The children will in future be better informed on the choice of foods they take meaning it will enable them to successfully attain and sustain healthy eating behaviors. This will in future help them avoid hypertension, cardiovascular diseases and other disorders that are experienced by obese and overweight people (Potvin, McQueen & Hall 2008).
Another basic strategy for health promotion was creating supportive environment and strengthen community action to combine the effects of health promotion (Kirch, 2008). As a community, all members must receive education otherwise there will be no progress in health programs. Health professionals in this case trained staff and parents who were the community of the preschoolers and in this way a support system was established to enable the preschoolers improve their health status through dietary changes and dietary activities. According to the Ottawa Charter for health promotion, the final basic strategy is to mediate. Health promotion cannot be achieved by one sector alone but rather its success should depend on all sectors. These include the government, community and independent organizations such as media and the food industry (Talbot & Verrinder, 2009).
In the case study, the success of the health intervention depended on the strategies that were used to attain health change. These strategies were sustained by intersectorial action where the preschool care givers, the parents and the policy makers were able to come together and enable healthy change in the preschoolers’ lives. Planning for future strategies as these, the group behind the intervention should consider capacity building with partners and project management committees as well as policy changes that will roll back obesity and the effects of obesity (O’Donnell, 2002). This way, healthier generations will pass through the school systems and enable change on the outside as well as inside the system as they go through school. In conclusion, the intervention used was in line with the Ottawa charter that launched a series of basic strategies to achieve a common goal of “health for all” by the year 2000 and beyond (Hayden, 2009).
References
Hayden, J. (2009). Introduction to health behavior theory. Sudbury, Mass: Jones and Bartlett
Kickbusch, I. (2008). Policy Innovation for Health. New York, NY: Springer
Kirch, W. (2008). Encyclopedia of public health. New York, NY: Springer
McQueen, D. V., Kickbusch, I., & Potvin, L. (2007). Health and modernity: The role of theory in health promotion. New York: Springer
McQueen, D. V., & De Salazar, L. (2011). Health promotion, the Ottawa Charter and ‘developing personal skills’: a compact history of 25 years. Health Promotion International, 26(suppl_2): ii194-ii201.
Muto, T., Nakahara, T., Nam, E. W., (2011). International Union for Health Promotion and Education., Nihon Kenkō Kyōiku Gakkai., & Asia-Pacific Conference on Health Promotion and Education. London: Springer
O’Donnell, M. P. (2002). Health promotion in the workplace. Albany: Delmar Thomson Learning
Potvin, L., McQueen, D. V., & Hall, M. (2008). Health promotion evaluation practices in the Americas: Values and research. New York: Springer.
Talbot, L., & Verrinder, G. (2009). Promoting health: A primary health care approach. Chatswood, N.S.W: Elsevier Australia