Table of Contents
Factors influencing the health of this community
Based on the windshield survey report of Texmex city, there are various factors that are likely to influence the health of the community. The first factor is the level of income. From the survey, it has been found that the average income of the city is $8000 annually (Gomez, 2012). Moreover, around 75% of the population leaves below the poverty level. With such a high percentage of the population comprised of low-income earners, the affordability of healthcare services might be difficult for the residents of the city.
Secondly, the level of education is a factor when it comes to issues that may influence the health of the community (Gomez, 2012). The reason is because the education level indirectly affects the economic status of the people of Texmex city, which determines whether they can afford appropriate healthcare services.
The physical environment is another factor that may influence the community’s health as regards Texmex city. With mining being the main economic activity, air and water pollution are more likely to happen thus posing a great health hazard.
The culture of the residents of the city contributes to the factors that influence the economy of this population. The survey report states that approximately 20% of the population comprises of Latinos. Most people visit herbalists and faith healers as opposed to seeking the services of modern medicine because most of the Latinos are uneducated. These people are more likely to succumb to diseases, which would have been managed if they sought the services of providers of modern medicine.
Another factor that plays a critical role in the health of the community is the ease of access to medical facilities (Brown et al., 2014). The only hospital near the city is located in Tucumcari and can only be accessed via the city’s hearse that sometimes acts as a makeshift ambulance.
Transport is another factor that is crucial to the health of the community. The city has no official ambulance and the train that can get one to the hospital in case of emergencies only comes twice a day.
Nutrition is also a contributing factor that influences the health of the community. According to the survey report, pinworms are a significant health issue for the community. Most of the worms are passed through infected foods and drinks. Therefore, proper nutrition plays a great role in managing the health menace.
Finally, there is the susceptibility of motor vehicle accidents. According to the survey report, about half of the families in Texmex city own cars. Therefore, motor accidents are bound to occur at one point or another. The motor accidents bring about great health hazard since the residents suffer from injuries that may be fatal.
Assets present the community and their importance
The community health problems arise from factors that are likely to affect the community’s health. For instance, there is the issue of difficulty in accessing health facilities. The city has no hospital, and the residents are forced to travel to Tucumcari to access a hospital. However, with abundant land in the city, the residents could source for funds with the help of the city’s leadership and a build a hospital which makes access for medical services for the residents of the city better (Brown et al., 2014).
Secondly, there is the issue of transport. The city lacks an official ambulance that could be used in emergency scenarios. However, almost half the families in the city own cars. There could be an initiation of social programs that enable volunteers to donate their private motor vehicles to be used as makeshift ambulances in the case of emergencies.
Finally, the issue of a significant portion of pregnant women in the city not seeking prenatal care could be solved. For instance, according to the survey report, there is a presence of a lot of services targeted at pregnant women (Brown et al., 2014). The only issue of mass education to educate the women on the importance of seeking such services.
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Population nursing diagnosis derived from the assessment team’s data
From the survey report, there are various issues that seem to pose a high risk to the health of the community in Texmex city. For instance, there are huge copper mines. As with other industrial plants, mining emits a lot of carbon gas to the environment (Gomez, 2012). The modern technology employed during such processes is also likely to emit radiation both, which are great health hazards to the community at large.
A large portion of the community is comprises of toddlers under the age of 8. Therefore, hygiene is a big risk factor as toddlers are more likely to be affected by sanitation related infections such as pinworm. Therefore, the healthcare services should put significant focus on the issue of sanitation and the reduction of pollution levels.
Health problems are evident in the case study
According to the survey, some of the health problems prevalent in the city of Texmex include the infection by pinworms, anemia, and tuberculosis. Pinworms are particularly a major problem because they are more likely to affect children. Half of the city’s population is comprised of toddlers. Therefore, an infestation of the pinworms would lead to a great health pandemic to the whole city.
The second is the presence of tuberculosis. Texmex is a city whose economy is dependent on the mining industry. Like any other mining industry, the copper mines have a greater potential in contributing to air pollution. Tuberculosis is a communicable disease and is likely to spread through air as fast rate. Therefore, for prevention plans, the residents will have to look to contain the disease through regulating the main economic activity of the city. The disease can also be prevented by offering vaccines to people and educating people on the importance of avoiding congested areas and to learn coughing techniques. Those infected can be isolated and given antibiotics until they heal.
Another disease experienced in the city is anemia. The problems of anemia hugely stem from poor nutrition. Nutrition contributes immensely to the risk factors of anemia (Whitney et al., 2010). With the second greatest economic activity of the community being agriculture and food industry, anemia is thus a huge concern for the health policy makers of the city.
Three top priority problems and a health program to resolve them
Level of health care involved. (e.g., prevention, promotion, resolution, restoration).
One of the priority problems in the city is tuberculosis. There is the need for elaborate plans on the prevention, promotion, and restoration as pertains managing the disease. For prevention, there should be programs aimed at educating people on the prevention mechanisms for the infection. These include avoiding public transport and public gatherings. These places are usually crowded and the air can be contaminated with communicable diseases, which are likely to be passed from one person to the other.
As for promotion campaigns that seek to raise the awareness about various aspects of the disease, there should be programs that aim to educate the patients of the disease on how to take their medications properly. People should be educated on how to change their public mannerisms to avoid infecting the disease to other people.
The programs should also devise resolutions for that tend to change the behavioral change of the community in general. For instance, the pollution level for some of the mining companies should be reduced as well as starting immunization programs for residents of the city. The city should then start a restoration program that aims to make it TB free. This could be achieved by preventing any new cases of infection.
Who should be involved in the planning group, why and how you would obtain community participation in the planning.
People to be involved in the planning group include representatives from the elected leadership. There should also be one from the city’s council and some chosen members of the community should also be involved in the planning. The community could get to participate in the planning through being educated on the importance of improving the health of the community.
The additional information required and where you would obtain that information.
There is need to get health records from other states who suffer from significantly lower levels of TB infections. The records help to obtain the means of planning means of prevention that those other states have been using. The data could be obtained from federal or those states’ archives (Brown et al., 2014).
Goals and objectives for the program.
The main goal of the program is to maintain the health of the community by ridding the community of all cases of infection pandemics.
The objectives are to devise specific tools that could be used to eliminate the diseases such immunization programs, and mass education for the masses.
Resources needed to implement the program
Some of the resources needed to implement the program include finance, facilities, and personnel. Finance is critical since some of the objectives could only be implemented through the availability of funds (Brown et al., 2014). For instance, the funds to be used to fund the immunization programs. Second, the availability of health personnel is critical since they give professional assistance during the process of implementation. Those include physicians, nurses, and nutritionists.
How would you gain acceptance of your program
One of the issues of concern in the implementation of such a program stems from the need to gain acceptance of the program from the masses. It is common knowledge that most people are usually reluctant to accept change that tends to change their way of living. For instance, the programs seek to persuade the industries, more specifically the mining firms to reduce their levels of pollution. This may require them to adopt greener sources of energy, which are usually expensive to implement. To reduce the resistance the program implementation is likely to receive from such firms; there will be needed to educate the management of the firms of the long-term benefits of using such sources of energy (Brown et al., 2014). It has been proven that greener sources of energy are cheaper in the long run compared to carbon emitting fuels that contribute a lot to the pollution levels.
Secondly, to rise the possibility of the program being accepted, it should be implemented instead of just direct implementation of the suggestions made in the program, small aspects of the program should first be implemented. This is likely to affect some small parts of the population of the city. They will give positive feedback on the implementation of the program. The other parts of the projects will be implemented with minimum resistance from the masses. Such an implementation could either be done in pilot or phases. In pilot implementation, some aspects of the new program are run while the old aspects still run. The people will assess the viability of the new program by comparing its results against the in phases against the targeted response. In phased out implementation, the old aspects are phased out as new ones get adopted. There is no parallel running of any of the old and new programs.
How would you go about implementing the program?
There should definitive steps were taken during the implementation of the program to maximize its effectiveness. The first is community participation. The task group should work in such a way that no part of the community will feel left out on the implementation of the program (Brown et al., 2014). The reason is that it may lead to acrimonious confrontation between the locals and implementers. To ensure this, the task group should employ representative of the community that will act as the liaison officer during the implementation process. The officer’s role is to represent the interests of the community during the implementation stage.
There should also be frequent public gatherings within the community that is aimed at informing the public on the particular aspects of the implementation process and their significance. This will prevent any forms of resistance from the community that may result from the lack of information. Information could also be circulated through circulars and visiting areas of interests such as schools and churches.
Furthermore, implementation requires the personnel that can carry out the tasks to be implemented. Physicians will be required to assess the community’s health. Nurses will be required to assess the health risk factors of community and give their nursing diagnosis (Whitney et al., 2010). Other experts like the public health specialist will also be required.
The implementation will require the task force to get all the necessary state level and federal licensing first. For instance, running immunization programs require approval from the necessary approval bodies.
How would you conduct outcome and process evaluation program?
After the implementation of the program, there will be the need to evaluate the effectiveness of its operations. The first is formative evaluation. This refers to assessing the effectiveness of the program at the early stages with view to perfecting certain aspects of that may have room for improvement. In our case, the programs aimed at treating certain diseases prevalent within the community may be evaluated to assess whether the medication is currently used works at achieving the goals desired.
There is also summative evaluation. That is the evaluation conducted after the whole implementation process has been completed. The aim of such an implementation is to assess the effectiveness of the program as pertains achieving the general goal of program to improve the healthcare of the community. That could be measured by looking at the rate of change of mortality levels of the residents of the city.
- Brown, R. E., Miller, B., Taylor, W. R., Palmer, C., Bosco, L., Nicola, R. M., … & Simpson, K. (2014). Health-care expenditures for tuberculosis in the United States. Archives of Internal medicine, 155(15), 1595-1600.
- Gomez, A. R. (2012). Mining New Mexico: A Photographic Essay. New Mexico Historical Review, 69(4), 357.
- Whitney, E., DeBruyne, L. K., Pinna, K., & Rolfes, S. R. (2010). Nutrition for health and health care. Cengage Learning.