Harvard University Endocrine Disorders Discussion

Instructions:
Respond to this discussion below. You can critique, agree or disagree but explain why. It is a discussion response format to this writing below from a classmate. Any response is valid as long as it is constructive and relating to this subject matter below.
After researching and thinking about these questions, I believe that to an extent, parents should be held responsible for eliminating or reducing risk factors for endocrine disorders. I believe parents should be responsible to the best of their means to help their children live a healthy lifestyle and therefore eliminating risk factors of many endocrine disorders such as diabetes, the most common endocrine disorder in the United States. Evidence suggests that it is of extreme importance parents to act as positive role models to their children, and that parental influence can play a stronger role in a child’s decisions about their own health than influences from social and societal factors. While I do feel parents should be held to a certain level, I do not feel they should hold sole responsibility as inequalities with access to care, education, and preventative medicine can often make it difficult for parents to implement this responsibility themselves without proper support for schools, government, and other public organizations and programs. I also feel that holding parents fully responsible could create a negative impact as parents who put a lot of effort toward this may be blamed if not successful. It is of extreme importance for parents to do everything they can to keep their children healthy, but I do not think blaming parents will help improve statistics and feel that it is important for parents to be able to have equal access to healthcare resources if held responsible so they are best able to help their children with the support of schools while children are at school, government, and healthcare professionals.
A study evaluating the long-term benefits of family-based lifestyle interventions in clinical settings showed promise, however, with inequities with access to care in combination with limited clinical resources make this difficult without the implementation of public funding and participation. (Green, Lawrence W et al). Another article discussed how diabetes management could be greatly improved with telemedicine between healthcare providers and schools, and “school nurse support for children is effective in specific contexts, but not all education systems employ onsite nurses” (Edwards, Deborah et al.). This shows how it is important for government to oversee and implement effective methods so that gaps in access such as some schools not having a school nurse, can be improved. The evidence of this article suggests that further evaluations and solutions are requires to show improvement. I believe government should initiate programs to ensure children and families have proper support for eliminating these risk factors by providing the education, school food services programs, and clinical care for children and their families. I think it is of great importance that these implemented programs address the disparities some communities face by ensuring that at school- children have the resources they need to foster positive change and continue to support them in making these decisions by providing support for parents needing help.