Community health promotion project Sample Essay

Community health promotion project

Population of interest

The population of interest has been identified as older adults who are 65 years of age or older and residing in South Charlotte, in Charlotte City, Mecklenburg County, North Carolina State. The project area has a population of 233,794 of which 122,399 are females while 11,395 are males. The median age is 38.8 years with the median age of males being 38 years while median age of females is 40 years. Employment data reveals that 47.48% of the population is unemployed while 52.52% are employed. Of the employed persons, 5.81% 46.71% hold white collar jobs while 5.81 hold blue collar jobs. 5.85% of the population is self-employed, 39.01% work in the private industry, 3.6% work in the government, and 4.06% work in non-profit organizations. The life expectancy of males is 76 years while the life expectancy of females is 82.5. The infant mortality rate is reported at 7.5%. Approximately 50% of reported deaths are resultant of chronic conditions such as cancer, heart diseases, and stroke (Point2 Homes, 2020).  Community health promotion project Sample Essay

The South Carolina community has 91,987 households of which 13.7% are family households while 25.65% are non-family households. Each household has an average of 3 persons. The average annual income for each household is $127,691.81 and median household income is $84,366.00. 7.5% of the population lives in poverty while the remaining 92.5% lives above the poverty level. Age reviews by income shows that persons less than 25 years of age have annual median earnings at $38,529, persons between 25 and 44 years of age have annual median earnings at $86,650, persons between 45 and 65 years of age have annual median earnings at $115,833, while persons over 65 years of age have annual median earnings at $58,231 (Point2 Homes, 2020). The age dependency ratio for the population is 51.3 with dependency ratio of 15.2 reported for older age (older than 64 years) and dependency ratio of 36.1 reported for children (less than 15 years) (World Population Review, 2020). Older adults have been considered of interest because of their unique risk factors for complications during the post-operative recovery period. Of particular interest to the present project is the potential benefits from optimizing body mass index, A1C management and smoking as risk factors for complications in the post-operative recovery period.

Mortality and morbidity risk factors

Older adults represent a public health burden for South Charlotte community. That is because aging is a leading risk factor for major chronic medical conditions. Approximately 28% of this population are healthy while the remaining 72% have been diagnosed with one or more chronic condition. In fact, 7% have more than three coexisting chronic conditions, 11% have three coexisting chronic conditions, 21% have two coexisting chronic conditions, and 33% have one chronic condition. The most common chronic conditions are myocardial infarction, hypertension, diabetes, arthritis, cataracts, emphysema, chronic bronchitis, cancer, stroke, and congestive heart failure. Other chronic conditions of concern in include nephritis, pneumonia, influenza, cerebrovascular disease, chronic lower respiratory disease, and heart diseases (Liu et al., 2018).  Community health promotion project Sample Essay

The increasingly higher life expectancy of the general population has been partly driven by reduced mortality among older adults. As is true among their younger counterparts, older adults report heart disease as the most common cause of death, with cancer coming second. The five leading causes of death among older adult populations are heart disease (30.4%), cancer (22%), Alzheimer’s disease (3.7%), chronic lower respiratory tract disease (6%), and cerebrovascular disease (7.4%). They account for 69.6% of all reported deaths. There is an exponential increase in heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and cerebrovascular disease incidences with Alzheimer’s disease presenting a sleeper increase. However, the mortality rates for lower respiratory tract disease and cancer do not have a steep increase, perhaps because they are mostly reported among smokers who die at younger ages. Also, diabetes rates do not show steep increases because diabetics disproportionately die at younger ages. Still, it is important to note that there have been remarkable declines in mortality rates resultant from chronic diseases, perhaps a reflection of major advances made in treatment and prevention approaches, as well secular trends. Unfortunately, the mortality rate for cancer continues to rise (Pilotto & Martin, 2018).

Among older adults, the most common medical condition is hypertension, followed by stroke and coronary heart disease. Chronic joint symptoms and arthritis are also reported among the older adult population, and they have an impact on their overall quality of life and health although they do not appear in the list of most common conditions (Busby-Whitehead et al., 2016). Another unique health feature of older adult populations is the high comorbidity: co-occurrence of multiple chronic medical conditions. It is not uncommon for older adults to report more than one chronic condition. In fact, 39% of older adults report comorbidities. Heart disease remains the leading cause of hospitalization among the population, with congestive heart failure being more common than other heart disease manifestations. Other chronic diseases are also frequent causes of death and hospitalization, but so are the diseases typically not associated with mortality among other populations to include psychosis, chronic bronchitis, osteoarthritis, and fractures. That is because these diseases cause volume depletion and septicemia that is particularly burdensome for older adults experiencing physical declines as they are frail and at high risk of these diseases (Pilotto & Martin, 2018).

Dementia is another condition of aging that occurs among older adults and for which incidence and prevalence rates are not readily available because of the complexities of diagnosis. Yet another concern is disability, a consequence of severe medical conditions such as heart disease and stroke on mental and physical functioning with effects on work ability and need for informal and formal care. Limitations present for basic tasks such as grasping, reaching and standing. Although not a measure of disability, these basic tasks represent the building blocks of functioning. Disability remains a powerful marker for predicting adverse outcomes among older adults as they can capture the presence and severity of impact for multiple pathologies to include psychological, cognitive and physical conditions. In effect, disability is a produce of disuse, sedentary lifestyle or the medical condition from which an older adult suffers, and physiological declines resultant from aging. Overall, it is important to note that disability status remains a relevant measure among older adults because it represents overall health status with complex disease patterns, and it has direct implications for health care needs (Kahn, Magauran Jr. & Olshaker, 2014).

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Although the leading causes of death among older adults are also some of the leading causes of death among other age groups, many of these medical conditions are treatable and preventable. It is important to understand these disease, how to delivery treatment, and how the older adult population can live with them to prolong health and life (Busby-Whitehead et al., 2016).  Community health promotion project Sample Essay

Health risk factors

Health risk factors refers to the set of circumstances that determine health outcomes through increasing the probability of disease occurrence. The first risk factor for older adults is increased age. As adults age, they become more susceptible to disability and diseases. In fact, aging among older adults is deleterious to their fitness. In addition, aging can evolve into a consequence of the declining force of natural selection attributable to the extrinsic survival hazards whereby aging presents as a side-effect of the accumulation of disease pressures that accumulate over time. It presents as an accumulation of multiple forms of pathology and damage to different body systems resulting the integrity of the body maintenance pathways being compromised. To be more precise, there are several conserved mechanisms that are compromised by aging to include repair of damaged body tissues, DNA repair, energy and metabolic homeostasis, mitochondria, and nutrient sensing pathways. As such, as aging can be considered as the accrued effect of the finite number of biological pathways in the body and causes the disease burden of older adults to increase (Busby-Whitehead et al., 2016).

The second risk factor is obesity (BMI > 30). Persons who are obese, compared to their counterparts with health/normal weight, are at higher risk for developing serious health conditions and diseases to include stroke, hypertension and coronary heart disease. Unfortunately, obesity is now common among older adults with incidence at 25%. 27% of females and 24% of males are obese. Although the causes of obesity are multifactorial (to include social, environmental, psychological, physiological, nutritional and genetic causes), the main cause is excessive calories intake matched with limited energy expenditure. Obesity remains a serious risk factor among older adults due to the high prevalence, causal relationships with many disorders and diseases, increased mortality and morbidity, reduced quality of life, and accelerated aging. In fact, obesity has approximately the same association with chronic diseases as does 20 years of aging, greatly exceeding the associations reported for smoking. It increases the relative risk of premature death to 2 among women and 2.58 among males. The implication is that obesity is a health risk factor among older adults (Mattu, Grossman & Carpenter, 2016).

The third health risk factor is diabetes. 25% of older adults suffer from diabetes, and aging among them is a significant driver for the medical condition. Among older adults diagnosed with diabetes, they either report the disease as an incident condition that developed in old age or as a long-standing conditions that developed at a young age. The disease has been linked to higher risk of institutionalization, reduced functional status and higher mortality among older adult populations. Also, older adults suffering from diabetes are at higher risk for chronic and acute cardiovascular and microvascular complications. However, the heterogeneity of health status of older adults shifts attention away from diabetes as a health risk factor and concern. Still, it is important to note that diabetes increases the risk of other health concerns to include higher rates of amputations of lower extremities, renal disease, visual impairment, and myocardial infarction. Deaths and emergency room visits resultant from diabetes are also significantly higher among older adult populations. Although type 1 diabetes occurs among older adults, type 2 diabetes is more common owing to the combined effects of impaired pancreatic islet functions, decline in islet proliferative capacity, and insulin resistance. These age-related concerns are associated with physical inactivity, sarcopenia, and adiposity that are more common among older adults (Mattu, Grossman & Carpenter, 2016).

The fourth risk factor is smoking. It increases the risk of developing chronic conditions such as peripheral vascular disease, stroke, coronary heart disease, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. These are medical conditions that target older adults to negative affect their social, psychological and physical health. Smoking is also associated with frailty, a condition linked to reduced physiological reserves and increased vulnerability to adverse health outcomes such as institutionalization, hospitalization, disability, fractures and falls. Given that smoking is a modifiable lifestyle factor that increases the risk of chronic conditions, reduced smoking among older adults has a high potential for interrupting the causal pathway (Pilotto & Martin, 2018).

Health promotion activity

The health promotion activity for older adults has been identified as targeting obesity, diabetes and smoking as risk factors for adverse post-surgery outcomes among the population of interest. There is an acknowledgement that although heart diseases and reduced functionality are the strongest predictors of adverse outcomes during the post-operative period, obesity, diabetes and smoking are risk factors for these predictors. An activity to develop team-base care interventions to help patients manage diabetes, improve and empower health education. This will be in collaboration with the public and private health markets. The goal is to provide educationally literature, coaching champions that use telehealth to empower individuals with support through their journey modifying health behaviors.  Community health promotion project Sample Essay

Conclusion

This health promotion activity anticipates that targeting older adults in South Charlotte, North Carolina for health education on how to manage obesity, diabetes, smoking cessation, and nutrition. This will improve their awareness of healthy behaviors while helping in improving surgery recovery outcomes for this population (Kumar, 2018). The promotion activity will seek to achieve three main objectives: maintaining and increasing functional capacity; maintaining or improving self-care; and stimulating education of health information that supports independence (Stanhope, 2016).

References

Busby-Whitehead, ‎J., Arenson, ‎C., Durson, S., Swagerty, D., Mosqueda, L., Singh, M., & Reichel, W. (2016). Reichel’s care of the elderly: clinical aspects of aging (7th ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kahn, J., Magauran Jr., B., & Olshaker, J. (2014). Geriatric emergency medicine: principles and practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kumar, C. S. (2018). Preoperative Assessment in Older Adults: A Comprehensive Approach. American Family Physician 98(4), 214-220.

Liu, Z., Kuo, P. L., Horvath, S., Crimmins, E., Ferrucci, L., & Levine, M. (2018). A new aging measure captures morbidity and mortality risk across diverse subpopulations from NHANES IV: A cohort study. PLoS Medicine, 15(12), e1002718. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1002718

Mattu, A., Grossman, S., & Carpenter, C. (2016). Geriatric emergencies: a discussion-based review. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Pilotto, A., & Martin, F. (2018). Comprehensive geriatric assessment. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Point2 Homes (2020). South Charlotte demographics. Retrieved from https://www.point2homes.com/US/Neighborhood/NC/Charlotte/South-Charlotte-Demographics.html

Stanhope, M. &. (2016). Public health nursing: population centered health care in the community (9th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Elsevier-Health Services Division.

World Population Review (2020). Charlotte, North Carolina Population 2020. Retrieved from https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/charlotte-population/

Community health promotion project Sample Essay

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