Nutrition/Malnutrition
My
choice of public health measures that impact children’s development all over
the world is nutrition/malnutrition. I
chose this topic because I know that a child’s development is affected when
they do not receive proper nourishments.
As a future educator having knowledge of proper nourishments and child
nutrition is very important. Children’s
learning abilities as well as cognitive skills can be altered when they are
malnourished. Malnutrition affects the
physical, social, and mental development in children.
Protein-calorie
malnutrition is when a person does not receive enough food to sustain normal
growth. This is mostly common in
children in the developing nations. They
often suffer from stunting which is a condition where the children are very
short. This condition comes from chronic
malnutrition (Berger, 2012). Another
condition that malnutrition causes is wasting.
Wasting is when the children are severely underweight for their
age.
In
Africa wasting has increased tremendously since 2000. In South Asia the malnutrition rates are
really high. According to statistics at
least half of the children over five (5) years of age are stunted and another
half under five (5) years of age are wasted because of malnutrition (Berger,
2012). In
India children die from illnesses such as typhoid, malaria, measles, diarrhea,
and pneumonia which are directly due to them being malnourished. According to
the World Health Organization, malnutrition is the largest contributor to child
mortality. We cannot expect malnourished children to be
healthy nor can we expect them to have high educational achievements. Prevention can stop childhood malnutrition
and because we now have knowledge we can protect our health as well as our
loved ones.
Researching
this information has made me more aware of the importance of public health
measures and the impact that it has on child development all over the
world. As educators we are responsible
for being advocates for public health measures in and around our schools. It is our duty to make certain that our
children are in an environment that in conducive to learning. This means that they are fully nourished, in
good health, and ready and eager to learn.
References
Berger,
K. S. (2012). The developing person
through childhood. New York, NY:
Worth Publishes.
Hi Kiara, I enjoyed reading your post. I agree, nutrition does play a major part in development this is one of the components that Head Start has continued to put emphasis on. It's important that we stay educated so that we are able to continuously provide support to our parents while educating them on unfamiliar topics.
ReplyDeleteI applaud Head Start and other child care programs that advocate healthy lifestyles through good nutrition programs. There are some programs that present themselves as supporting the well-being of the child, but they do not serve healthy meals and allow parents to pack meals that are nutritionally inadequate.
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