Goal of increasing public awareness regarding health and disease prevention.
Goal of increasing public awareness regarding health and disease prevention.
Healthy People 2020 was created by the federal government with the goal of increasing public awareness regarding health and disease prevention. One of its many goals is to promote better health and decrease the incidence of chronic diseases by advocating for healthy diets and maintaining a healthy body weight (Nutrition, n.d.). The nurse practitioner plays a crucial role in helping to promote healthy lifestyle and improve exercise compliance with their patients. One of the most obvious and effective ways of accomplishing this goal is to serve as a role model for family, community, and patients. Patients are much more likely to receive health education from those that are true to their word. The International Council of Nurses (INC) proposed that if only nurses focused more on their own health, they would have an easier time influencing their patients’ wellbeing, and in a study conducted in the United States, healthy weight nurses were found to be more influential than their counterpart unhealthy nurses (Preparing, 2019). Over the last decade there has been a radical advancement in mobile phone technology, and this has allowed healthcare providers to tap into this trend, harnessing it to advance healthcare services. Some of the many ways it has been used include: promoting healthy lifestyle, physical activity, and weight loss. The benefit of using a mobile phone application is that it allows for easy delivery to patients, regardless of location or time. It also helps break socioeconomic barriers, since most people own a smartphone. One notable application designed to help promote weight loss is the MINISTOP App (Mobile-based Intervention Intended to Stop Obesity in Preschoolers). While this application is still in trial stages, it holds promising potential to combat obesity (Henriksson et al., 2020).
