Primary Health Prevention Plan

Primary Health Prevention Plan

Student’s Name

Institution

Teaching Proposal for A Primary Prevention Health Plan

Introduction

In the last few years nursing education just like all other fields in the nursing sector is going through critical changes so as to meet the requirements of a society that is rapidly changing. These changes involve the adjustment of new roles for nurses and medical practitioners. This proposal seeks to teach the community how they can develop strategies to prevent basic health problems that are as a result of negligence from the government and other key stakeholders.

The road to ensure every individual’s health in a community is improved is wrought with a lot of obstacles. The community cannot let itself fail. The community has to continue working as one unit to ensure that affordable health is available to all individuals. In order to attain equity in health, national organizations, communities and states will have to take a multidisciplinary approach. This is a strategy that will involve data collection, improving health, the environment, housing, agriculture, labor, transportation and justice (Rowe, 2008).

Research documents that despite the progress that has been made

in the improvement in overall health of the nation, minorities are still experiencing

continuing disparities in the burden of illness. Racial and ethnic minorities suffer

a disproportionately high incidence of chronic disease. African Americans have an incidence of hypertension nearly 40 percent higher than that of the white population, the effects of hypertension are more frequent and severe in African Americans. This population develops hype

rtension at an earlier age than whites. Hypertension is a leading cause of stroke. In Nevada,

according to the Bureau of HealthPlanning & Statistics in 1999, the disparity in stroke incidence between African Americans and for whites, was 41.45 and 20.82 per 100,000 deaths respecti

vely.Barriers to the Attainment of Good Health in the Community

The lack of access to quality health care

Lack of regular physical activities

Lack of immunization to prevent infectious diseases

Obesity and Overweight due to lack of promotion of good nutrition and healthier weight.

Poor environmental Quality: Lack of promotion of healthy environments.

Tobacco use: Lack of preventing and reducing tobacco use

Injury and Violence::The lack of advocators to reduce violence and promote safety within communities.

Substance Abuse; there is a need to reduce and prevent substance abuse.

Mental health: There is a need to promote well being and mental health

Responsible Sexual behavior: There is an ardent need for stakeholders to start promoting responsible sexual behaviors within the community.

Strategies for Creating a Healthy Community

In order to attain the objective of improving their health standards members of the given community must be supported by the every individual within the community. The process by which a healthy community can be created is likely to take time a lot of efforts and several steps. This paper proposes the MAP –IT approach (Mobilize, Assess, Plan, Implement and Track).

Mobilize: It is critical that members of a community should mobilize organizations and individuals that care for the community’s health status into a coalition.

Assess: Members of the community should assess areas that are of critical need in their community as well as the resources and other strengths that they can tap in to deal with these areas.

Plan their approach: The community members should start with a vision of where they want to be as a community, upon which they should add action steps and strategies that can assist them attain their vision.

Implementation of their plan should involve concrete steps of actions that should be monitored to make a difference.

Tracking of their progress should be done over time.

MOBILIZATION of Fundamental Organizations and Individuals

Being a Public health nurse in a small urban suburb I am greatly concerned with the growing number of obesity in school going children, deteriorating health standards in the community, substance abuse, tobacco consumption and sexual health and other health issues described above. Since I need guidance and action models to assist me in mobilizing the community and placing together a health educational program for the public schools and the community at large there is a need for the mobilization of the entire community to act (Perkins, 2007).

The first initiative in coming up with a healthier community is to mobilize primary organizations and individuals to form a community wide coalition. Almost every community has a governmental agency and a health department responsible for public health services for instance neighborhoods watch groups or block associations. These groups more often than not represent varied resources and interests for dealing with issues that are critical to maintaining and building the stability and health of an entire community. Apart from that, it can also assist in the mobilization of various resources to deal with health problems (Popay and Williams, 2010).

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To organize such a coalition in a community it is critical to engage likely coalition members on issues that are of critical concern to them as well as the community. A successful community coalition will then be built around critical issues of concern to the community such as: neighborhood crime, HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, teen pregnancy, environmental health, child as well as maternal health (Perkins, 2007).

In the past, coalitions have been built around a wide range of issues; however, not all of them greatly concerned the community leaders. It is critical that community coalitions collect enough data to convince community leaders that the issues at hand really warrant their immediate attention.

As much as it is feasible to begin building coalitions with an overall community wide event for instance a media or town hall event it is usually very critical to target particular organizations and individuals to work with them over a certain period of time till they commit themselves to working both with you and the rest of the community.

Individuals: Most coalitions that are effective are built around a group of individuals who are committed. Such community organizations could be made up of: unions, religious institutions, community groups, businesses, clinics, schools, hospitals and social services programs. Local organizations are critical because of the respect they command, their influence, their community involvement and their vast resources (Popay and Williams, 2010).

They can support required action while mobilizing resources to assist in the implementation of such actions. It is important that community representatives talk to local religious organizations, businesses and charities for they could make up great members of their team. The biggest challenge in the creation of a healthy community is the sustenance of involved members. This challenge can be dealt with by initially agreeing on the community’s vision (Rowe, 2008).

Creation of a vision: Your group’s vision should stem from the community’s most critical goals, needs and values. It should be a romanticized description of how your group coalition perceives the community. It should mirror the coalition members goals and should be constant with their believes and attitudes.

The Challenge with this community is to employ the combined strength of political will, scientific knowledge, community support, professional skill, community support and individual commitment to enable its members to lead active and full lives. This means being in a position to guarantee that all community members attain and sustain an optimum functioning level, through prevention of disability and death, cultivating community and family support while preserving a physical environment that is able to support human life.

This vision could be generated in the initial stages as individuals members mobilize other members of the community to work with them. The early creation of this vision permits all coalition members to be committed to the long term process. However, there could arise disagreements stemming from diverse expectations and principles of different community leaders. It is critical, however, for the coalition to work towards having a consensus on its vision and move to the next stage with a common vision (Popay and Williams, 2010).

It is critical for the community to realize that the improvement of individuals’ health involves more than the treatment and diagnosis of diseases. It instead stems from the proper care of the spirit, body and mind. For this community to attain its vision it must adopt a new perception on health. It has to shift from the providers of health care to the community members for their visionary direction, they will have to change from federal and state control to local control, they will have to shift from vertical to horizontal implementation of programs, they will have to define health in relation to wellness rather than illness, the community leadership will have to shift from domineering to participative, and finally the community will have to focus on health and prevention promotion rather than acute episodic treatment (Perkins, 2007).

ASSESS Community Resources Needs and Strengths (MAP-IT)

It is critical for community members to assess the health issues that they deem critical to their community in addition to other strengths and resources that they can tap in to address their health issues. To get a better judgment of what they can do versus what they would like to do they will have to take stock of the resources, needs and strengths in their community. Since community coalitions tend to have limited resources for addressing all their problems they should make use of these limited resources wisely. When members of a coalition work together to come up with priorities and assign resources to these priorities, they are likely to continue participating in the process in order to attain measurable outcomes (Popay and Williams, 2010).

PLAN for Action

Upon setting priorities and collecting the required data it is critical that the community coalition plan their approach. This would involve the creation of an action plan with water tight steps and deadlines. With the group’s vision as its guideline the coalition should come up with an action plan that has concrete steps to assist them attain their vision. The plan of actions should entail a time line, action steps, and collection of information and assignment of responsibilities. The community coalition’s target should be a measurable outcome that they will want to attain within a specified time frame. Where feasible all the coalition’s objectives should be measurable. This is critical for the coalition to evaluate its progress (Rowe, 2008).

IMPLEMENT the Action Plan

Once a Community coalition establishes their plan they can begin implementing the actions steps strategies in their plan. Coalition members that accept responsibilities for certain tasks should complete them within a specified time frame, constant with the time plan schedule. This part of the process can be augmented by having a cooperative and diversified group of community leaders that share in the coalition’s vision. For instance having the school superintendent as a member of the coalition’s health initiative could facilitate the implementation of projected actions in schools. The plan should be implemented through real actions that make a difference (Popay and Williams, 2010).

TRACK Progress and Results

As the action plan implementation moves on, it is critical for other community members to be informed of progress being made. The group members should hold meetings to review their progress. Tracking and Evaluations are critical to the long term success of the community coalition’s strategies. If the coalition works without any documentation of its actions it could become ineffective. This is because it may not be in a position to establish if whatever it is doing is improving the health concerns of the community. Continuing support and monitoring will allow the community coalition to track all their actions. The best way of handling it is to ensure that scheduled meetings are held where all members give reports of the actions they have taken regardless of how trivial they could be (Perkins, 2007).

Conclusion

Realizing real change could take days, weeks, months or even years. The most important thing is that the coalition members should not lose sight of what they set out to do. This will ensure that they effectively deal with health issues affecting their community.

References

Perkins, L. (2007) Evidence based health promotion. Chichester, Wiley,

Popay, J. & Williams, G. (2010) Researching the people’s health. London, Routledge.

Rowe, A. (2008). Health profiling: all you need to know. Liverpool, John Moores University and Premier Health NHS Trust.