Addressing Structural Issues- Crafting Public Policy Solutions for Private Problem
Eating disorders like binge eating disorder, bulimia nervosa, and anorexia nervosa have become a serious public health concern due to adverse health outcomes. The pervasive nature and health outcomes of weight stigmatization and eating disorders have provoked an increase in discussion of probable policy actions that can be implemented to address such public health problems (Puhl et al., 2014). Weight stigmatization and discrimination are more common among women and adolescents, and this is experienced in the form of bullying and victimization within and outside school. Since the media is the commonly used platform to advertise thinness as standard beauty among women, an important public policy to address the issue of eating disorders, particularly among adolescents, would be to regulate advertisements on these platforms. Some of these advertisements make use of post-production techniques such as Photoshop, which materially alter the bodies and faces of individuals in advertisements. This is a policy that has been employed in Israel, which has placed a legal ban on fashion models who are extremely thin (Puhl et al., 2014). In Europe, labeling enhanced images has been considered effective in fighting negative body image (Dewhurst, 2021). By placing a ban on advertisements that promote the thin body, eating disorders can be mitigated.
The common good approach can be a suitable framework employed to ensure that society obtains benefits. It has been established that eating disorders have costly consequences on individuals, their families, and society as a whole. By causing various medical complications which result in individuals’ inability to function properly in society and directing resources to facilitate treatment, eating disorders require a collaborative approach that will ensure the society benefits as a whole (Kianpour & Minto, 2020).
In the field of social work, cultural competence is the ability to practice one’s work in a way that identifies, values, and affirms the worth of communities, families, and individuals and also safeguards and preserves their dignity (Barsky, 2021). Subsequently, to ensure that the policy is culturally competent, it will be important to conduct in-depth research on every culture’s values, traditions, and history to ensure that the policy is consistent with such. There are some societies that value a thin body, but since individuals who are fatter also exist in such societies, it will be important to promote the use of actual models with both “thin” and “fat” bodies.
This public policy might fail to work for fashion models who believe that the only way that they can be accepted in the industry or maintain their career is by being unrealistically thin. In the fashion model, most individuals believe that it is their job to fail to eat since a skeletal frame is important for a look created by designers (Record & Austin, 2016). Such individuals should be advised to seek help from a mental health professional who will help them unlearn such ideologies and change their perspective regarding beauty. The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD) is one of the common agencies that help individuals struggling with eating disorders, the majority of whom are fashion models.
Fashion models are commonly used to set the standards of beauty in society. This puts immense pressure upon them to look in a certain manner. These models can form an important part of the solution for eating disorders. It would be important to advocate for increased awareness of eating disorders and advocate for models who do not fit the criteria of “thin.” In doing so, there will be lessened pressure on the models, and this will, by extension, lessen the pressures on the standards of beauty for society as a whole.
References
Barsky, A. (2021). Ethics Alive! Cultural Competence, Awareness, Sensitivity, Humility, and Responsiveness: What’s the Difference? The Social Work Careers Magazine. https://www.socialworker.com/feature-articles/ethics-articles/ethics-alive-cultural-competence-awareness-sensitivity-humility-responsiveness/
Dewhurst, E. (2021). How the US’s Policy Response to Eating Disorders Leaves Communities Hungry for More. Policy Perspectives. https://policy-perspectives.org/2021/04/21/how-the-uss-policy-response-to-eating-disorders-leaves-communities-hungry-for-more/
Kianpour, C.,& Minton, M. (2020). How Federal Policy Puts Eating Disorder Sufferers at Risk. Competitive Enterprise Institute. https://cei.org/studies/how-federal-policy-puts-eating-disorder-sufferers-at-risk/
National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders. (n.d). Recovery is Possible. ANAD is Here to Help. https://anad.org/
Puhl, R. M., Neumark-Sztainer, D., Austin, S. B., Luedicke, J., & King, K. M. (2014). Setting policy priorities to address eating disorders and weight stigma: views from the field of eating disorders and the US general public. BMC Public Health, 14(1), 1-10.
Record, K. L., & Austin, S. B. (2016). “Paris thin”: A call to regulate life-threatening starvation of runway models in the US fashion industry. American Journal of Public Health, 106(2), 205.
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Question 
There are a variety of social issues that social workers address on an individual basis every day. In the last unit, your essay addressed a “private problem” that could indicate a potential structural issue in the United States. Our next step is to focus on solving that issue.
Addressing Structural Issues- Crafting Public Policy Solutions for Private Problems
Use what you’ve read about to further solve the issue you address in your Unit 5 essay. (private problem)
*What public policy would you create to solve that issue?
* Which framework would you use to address it?
*How would you ensure that the policy is culturally competent?
*Are there people who suffer from that issue that may not have their problem solved by that public policy?
* How would you help those people?
*Is there an existing agency that helps this group of people?
*How could you integrate that group into your solution?
(Note: please include a link for the agency you chose in APA format on a reference list at the end of your essay).
https://www.socialworkers.org/Advocacy/Policy-Issues