Social Cognitive Theory Childhood Obesity

Childhood obesity is a public health challenge affecting people across the world; its rates increasing annually year by year. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), obesity now affects 1 in 6 children and adolescents in the United States. Factors contributing to child obesity include, but are not limited to genetics, the environment, and behavioral. This is an urgent health issue that needs to be addressed as child obesity is associated with increased risk of getting diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. Moreover, this can lead children to have heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and chronic lung disease when they get older. Additionally, it is more likely that an obese child may become obese as an

The Social Cognitive Theory (observational learning) implies that individuals can observe a behavior of others and at the same time it can influence their own future behaviors. The Social Cognitive Theory contains four processes of goal realization: attention and comprehension, retention, ability to perform the behavior, and the motivation to perform the behavior. The Social Cognitive Theory has been proven in being “One of the most commonly used theoretical frameworks underlying interventions to promote physical activity and healthy eating and prevent obesity in youth” (Rolling & Hong, 2016). A way to apply the Social Cognitive Theory would be to use environmental factors such as parental influence to persuade children’s behavior. Targeting parents as agents of change may be useful as children can mimic parents’ actions and therefore they can execute those same actions to their own future behaviors. Setting parents as good role models and having them make better food choices as well as spend more time outdoors can significantly impact their own children’s behavior. We can also introduce behavioral factors such as self-efficacy where children can motivate themselves in taking part in physical activities and in choosing the right foods. Self-efficacy is what makes a difference in how people think, act, and feel about themselves. It is good to point out that self-efficacy requires both perceived need and perceived reward. Children are more likely to change their negative, unhealthy behaviors to healthy ones if they have the individual confidence in their own abilities to perform it. Therefore, having high self-efficacy, will help obese children expect more of themselves and they are more likely to succeed at eating healthier and doing physical exercise. And finally, it takes