Professional Documents
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The Effect of Children Health (Obesity) due to Designs created by Landscape Architects
Brett T. Leavitt
LSA 220
Professor Fernandez
SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry
October 19, 2015
Introduction/ Background
At this point, it has been recorded that 78.6 million adult Americans are obese, which is
more than one-third of the American adult population, and 17.7 percent of the youth in America
are obese (Cynthia L. Ogden, Margaret D. Carroll, Brian K. Kit, & Katherine M. Flegal, 2014).
In the past decade, there has been multiple bills and discussions within Congress in order to
Purpose/Objectives
This paper focuses on a multitude of issues, due to each topic leading into an additional concern.
The primary focus of this paper is to help landscape architects understand the significance they
have in creating a healthier society in the United States. This topic falls under a major umbrella
since the designs that landscape architects are creating are effecting the weight of Americans,
which leads to other serious weight-related medical diseases. All landscape architects must feel
the need to incorporate the concept of health in their designs. In essence, all landscape architects
should put additional furnished parks in their designs in order to help childhood obesity. The
(Prevalence trends for child overweight and obesity in the USA and eight low-Income and middle-income countries)
(http://www.phitamerica.
org/Assets/PHIT+America+Digital+Assets/Obesity+Sedentary+Crisis/obesity+by+country+2015.jpg)
As seen above in figure 1 and figure 2, the United States ranks among the top around the
world, and stand out when it comes to child obesity. It has been documented that Americans are
less likely to become overweight today than they were throughout the 2000s. Though, Americans
have a higher chance of becoming overweight than individuals in other countries, especially
children. Additionally, throughout the past thirty years, the average weight of an American child
has increased by more than eleven pounds according to credited researchers (Ferdman, 2015).
Landscape architects could help America decrease the percentage of Americans who are obese
by designing walkable communities that would allow individuals to get outside and walk.
(https://www.bing.com/images/search?
q=medical+diseases+due+to+health+reated+issues&view=detailv2&&id=957572F42467391D14C2870AC6CDAB327EEB988C&selectedIndex
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As seen in Figure 3, there are various medical complications of obesity. Obesity causes
individuals to have deathly diseases and other diseases which effect their daily life. Obesity has
such consequences to individuals of a society which is why landscape architects need to
brainstorm of ways to prevent obesity while creating a design of a landscape. These landscape
architects are the ones who could dictate these diseases because by creating a walkable
community, the obesity rate would decrease.
References
(n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.phitamerica.org/Assets/PHIT+America+Digital+Assets/Obesity+Sedentary+
Crisis/obesity+by+country+2015.jpg