Healthy People: Program Analysis

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Healthy people is a program that is established on set of goals and objectives to help promote health and prevent disease, in the population of the United States (U.S). This program includes ten years, science-based objectives in an effort to promote the health of the residents of the U.S. Every ten years new set of goals are implemented by the United States Department of Health and Human Services to construct a healthful nation (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, n.d.). Healthy people 2020 is constructed to accomplish four overarching goals by the year of 2020. The first is to achieve extended high-quality life free of avertible disease, premature mortality, injury, and disability. The second is to eradicate disparities and achieve …show more content…
“The Health Belief Model focuses on health behavior changes and incorporates four original and two newer constructs: perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived benefits, perceived barriers, cues to action, and self-efficacy” (Jacobson Vann et al., 2011). Providing sufficient information on preventing obesity has become challenging in the health service settings due to limited amount of time spent with the patients. The Starting the Conversation (STC), a simple and time saving tool was developed to help assist physicians evaluate health behaviors of the children and parents to provide direct health education to prevent and treat obesity. The STC tool was built by a team of nurses, pediatricians, nutritionists and epidemiologists (Jacobson Vann et al., 2011). The tool was also constructed to help identify remarked barriers that might inhibit individuals from taking affirmative steps to modify health behaviors. The STC model also provides tips for helping the children eat a balanced diet and be physically active. Moreover, these tips also provide tactics for the parents to enhance their children’s healthy behavior. The transtheoretical model used to develop STC identifies the extent of readiness to change or to initiate new behaviors by both the parents and children. The phases of transtheoretical model include: precontemplation (individual is not considering changing a problem behavior, contemplation (individual assesses pros and cons; becomes conscious of the problem and has a desire to change), preparation (individual supports the pros in favor of attempting to change), action (behavior change in an individual begins) and maintenance (individual maintains behavior change for at least six months (Jacobson Vann et al., 2011). Furthermore, the STC tool provided questions to help the physicians identify the