Principles Of Epidemiology In Public Health Nursing

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Principles of Epidemiology in Public Health Nursing The public health nurse has a challenging undertaking when dealing with the health concerns of a community. These health concerns are multifocal in nature and include health promotion, management of chronic disease, along with assuring access to health care. Additionally, each community will change over time with the nurse needing to adapt and shift the health concern focus. Essentially, the nurse will need to know what the health concerns are in the community and how to use the available resources to address the community needs (Nies & McEwen, 2015). The purpose of the paper is to introduce a health concern in my community and use Nancy Milio’s Framework of Prevention to analyze this problem.…show more content…
Susan Milio’s Framework of Prevention directs the nurse to look at six specific propositions which relate to a person’s capacity to select healthy choices (Nies & McEwen, 2015). Fundamentally, Milio claimed that the decisions made by organizations and the government premeditated the options available to the public, therefore focusing efforts on the people “upstream” had an impact on the health choices a community would have available to them (Nies & McEwen, 2015). The first proposition of the framework involves deprivation of health resources (Nies & McEwen, 2015). This relates to my diagnosis of lack of knowledge regarding health condition since the poor in my community will have an inferior health status due to substandard access to health care. This leads right into the second proposition which is that behaviors, both good or bad, result from options available and are based on a person’s exposure to options, knowledge and beliefs (Nies & McEwen, 2015). To tie this to CVD, if a person is not aware that eating lunchmeat and soup increases their sodium intake, which in turn increases their blood pressure, they will not even be aware that they are making a poor food choice. The third proposition addresses organizational decisions and the role they play in options available to the public (Nies & McEwen, 2015). So, in my community, if the government decides to cut back the hours…show more content…
The way to accomplish the long-term goal would be through the interventions used to obtain short-term goals. The three short-terms goals I would chose to decrease risk of CVD in my community, would be to increase education regarding blood pressure over three months, to educate and improve dietary choices over six months, and increase physical activity over nine months. The interventions for blood pressure education could include fact sheet handouts describing, in layman’s terms, effects of continual increased blood pressure, education with use of a digital read out blood pressure machine, and importance of keeping a log for a primary physician to review. To assess this goal, at the end of three months, the person should be able to state what harm increased blood pressure causes, demonstrate how to use the blood pressure machine, and provide evidence of a tracking log. The interventions to improve dietary choices would include a fact sheet handout on recommended daily intakes of fat sodium, or calories. This could be tailored to the person’s unique situation since all areas may be too much for a person to address at once. At the end of six months, this can be evaluated by having people read the label of specific foods and declare if the food is a desirable choice based on sodium, fat,

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