Epidemiology is the study of how often diseases occur in different groups of people and why. Epidemiological information is used to plan and evaluate strategies to prevent illness and as a guide to the management of patients in whom the disease has already developed. It is determined that youths have some health-risk behaviours that cause mortality the youths in the United States. The 2017 national results for YRBS indicate that the majority of high school students engage in dietary behaviours and inappropriate weight control measures that are attributed to chronic diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular (Kann et al., 2018). The results indicate that approximately 43% of the youths play video games or rather mostly use computers for at least three hours or more per day on a school day for irrelevant things that are non-related to school work (Kann et al., 2018). Moreover, 15.4% are physically inactive for at least one hour on at least one day.
About 14.8% of the youths have obese while 15.6% are overweight (Kann et al., 2018). To control their overweight, it is determined that about 33% of youths use pills and drugs so as to cut weight. Essentially, the occurrence of the majority of the health-related behaviours varies with race, sex and in particular, sexual identity. The results reveal that most youths are found to be eating unhealthily as they mostly prefer eating fast food rather than healthy and nutritious food (Kann et al., 2018). Most youths drink less water and prefer drinking sodas instead of water. They drink several sodas in a day.
To overcome these inappropriate dietary behaviours and weight control measures. I would recommend that schools should come up with strict policies that discourage the use of phones in schools and as well provide a routine break time for exercise and undertake physical exercise so as to avoid playing video games. To avoid unhealthy eating that leads to obesity or chronic diseases, youths have to be encouraged to eat healthy foods and discourage them from often eating fast foods. Parents and schools should take an active role in providing healthy foods to the youths. To prevent youths from drinking a lot of sodas instead of water, clean drinking water should be made available and accessible so that youths do not have to opt for other alternatives. Also, bottled water prices should be cut to make them more affordable compared to sodas. To avoid using pills to cut weight, places for carrying out physical activities such as gyms and aerobics should be increased and encourage youths to go to these places to work out so as to cut weight in a healthy way.