As part of the Healthy People 2020 initiative, a national goal has been set to improve the health and well-being of women, infants, children, and families. This is an important public health movement considering their well-being determines the health of the next generation and can help predict future public health challenges for families, communities, and the health care system. Since there are many social and physical determinants of maternal, infant, and child health, recent efforts have been focused on addressing disparities by employing a “life course” perspective to health promotion and disease prevention. MICH 10.2 is an objective that seeks to improve the population’s health and well-being by increasing the proportion of pregnant women …show more content…
Health promotion is an important intervention that serves as an opportunity to educate women about their health, pregnancy, and childbirth. Recognizing danger signs, the benefits of good nutrition and exclusive breastfeeding, the harms of alcohol, tobacco, and drugs, and other relevant issues would be topics of focus. Disease prevention would highlight the importance of immunizations and medications during the prenatal period. Screenings for early detection and treatment for complications and diseases are highly important interventions that would take place in prenatal care. Other key interventions would include birth preparedness where the pregnant women is counseled on all her delivery decisions and complication readiness where women are encouraged to have an emergency plan for complicated deliveries (Mbuagbaw et al., 2015). Community-based interventions such as community support, mobilization, education and home visits by trained community health workers can lead to significant reductions in maternal morbidity and neonatal mortality, not to mention an increase in referrals to a health facility (Mbuagbaw et al., 2015). In underserved areas, a community health van may improve access to adequate prenatal care. Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital pioneered the idea in 1999 with the implementation of the Women’s Health Van, a fully equipped mobile health clinic. The clinic was designed to address barriers to health care access such as language, transportation, and cost. The van was capable of a wide range of gynecologic and obstetric care, completely free of charge. Ultimately it was learned that underserved women who utilized the van services for prenatal care initiated care three weeks earlier than women using other
The disparities may be attributed to the amount of prenatal care that pregnant women of different ethnicities receive. In 1996, 81.8% of all women in the nation received prenatal care in the first trimester--the m...
Often in practice, we as nurses deal with a variety of diseases and treatments and often have to react to the illness that the patient presents with upon our interaction. While this is an essential piece of our practice, we also have a duty to our patients to be proactive in preventing specific health-related consequences based on their risk factors and to promote their health and well being. Health promotion as it relates to nursing is about us empowering our patients to increase their control over their lives and well beings and includes: focusing on their health not just illness, empowering our patients, recognizing that health involves many dimensions and is also effected by factors outside of their control (Whitehead et al. 2008)..
Two-thirds of infants die during the first month of life due to low birth weight (Lia-Hoagberg et al, 1990). One reason for this outcome is primarily due to difficulties in accessing prenatal care. Prenatal health care encompasses the health of women in both pre and post childbearing years and provides the support for a healthy lifestyle for the mother and fetus and/or infant. This form of care plays an important role in the prevention of poor birth outcomes, such as prematurity, low birth weight and infant mortality, where education, risk assessment, treatment of complications, and monitoring of fetus development are vital (McKenzie, Pinger,& Kotecki, 2012). Although every woman is recommended to receive prenatal health care, low-income and disadvantaged minority women do not seek care due to structural and individual barriers.
The purpose of the scholarly paper part two is to demonstrate the completion of the evidence-based homeless health promotion project; it is specific to the population living in Miami, Florida. Part two of the project presents evidence-based interventions to address measurable and unfavorable health outcomes associated with risk factors that were identified in part one of the project. Also, health promotion project evaluation will be provided.
Lowdermilk, D. L., Perry, S., Cashion, K., & Alden, K. R. (2012). Maternity & women's health care (10th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Mosby.
Healthy People 2020 is an evidence-based 10-year report that focuses on health-care accomplishments within the United States. The goal is to achieve health equity, eliminate disparities, and to create a physical and social environment that promotes good health, quality of life, healthy development, as well as positive health beavhiors across all life stages. The objectives of HealthyPeople 2020 are to identify health improvement priorities nationwide, to increase public awareness and understanding of health issues, provide goals, engage sectors to
Participating countries, including Canada, committed to “end preventable deaths of newborns and children under 5 years of age” by 2030, which implies guaranteeing adequate maternal and infant health care (Heymann, et al., 2017, p.23). The World Health Organization defines maternal health as “the health of women during pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period” (Khanlou, Haque, Skinner, Mantini, & Kurtz Landy, 2017, p.2). For the purpose of this paper, this definition will be expanded to encompass all aspects of lifestyle and care that can affect women’s and infant’s physical and psychological health in pregnancy, childbirth and the first six months of life. As previous research has shown, the issue of access to maternal health care is extremely relevant in Canada for multiple reasons. As a country with generous social support and universal health care, Canada highly values accessibility to health care as a social and human goal (Sutherns & Bourgeault, 2008, p.864). However, historically, public health policy in Canada has always reflected the values and priorities of the white middle-upper-class, with explicit references to race and class, which set the ground for inequalities that persist to this day (Warsh & Strong-Boag, p.287-288). As studies have shown
How the provision of information in the antenatal period can positively affect health and life style choices in the pregnant woman and her family.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services [Office on Women’s Health] (2009), “Babies of mothers who do not get prenatal care are three times more likely to have a low birthweight and five times more likely to die than those born to mothers who do get care” (p. 1). Prenatal care in the U.S. began as a preventive measure against preeclampsia, which at the time included program visits by physicians who conducted physicals, history, and risk assessments. Over the years, prenatal care has changed its focus to low birthweight and other preventive illnesses in an attempt to reduce the rate of infant mortality. Increased use of prenatal care has shown a decline in the rates of birthweight-related mortality and other preventable medical diseases such as post-partum depression and infant injuries.
Healthy People 2020 is a program for the promotion of health and the prevention of diseases, launched by the Department of Health and Human Services in December 2010. According to healthypeople.gov, this program has four overarching goals which are first to achieve healthy, longer lives free of preventable diseases, injuries, and premature deaths; to achieve health fairness, eliminate differences, and improve all groups’ health; also to produce social and physical environments that encourage good health; and last but not least to promote life’s quality, healthy development, and healthy behaviors through all life stages. This program has a vision of a community where people live long, healthy lives. Healthy People 2020 offers a comprehensive
March Dimes Foundation: Pregnancy and Newborn Health Education Center. Retrieved from http://www.marchofdimes.com/materials/teenage-pregnancy.pdf
Health promotion is the process of improving health status of a person and prevention of disease by enabling the person to take control of their health. It is not just the absence of disease (Maben, & Clark, 1995). Health promotion is commonly used term in health care world, and in current society the promotion of health has greater significance, especially with the rise in consumerism. Health promotion is a vital concept for nursing, symbolizing notions that nursing is related today. Nurses are being urged to take a health promotion role, and are deemed by others as an ideal role for them. It is therefore crucial that nurses cognize the meaning of health promotion and also what is expected from them by undertaking this
Improvement in maternal health – aimed at reducing maternal mortality and ensuring that mothers giving birth are attended to by skilled health personnel.
The chosen health improvement initiative that is going to be studied within this community profile is reducing the amount of teenage pregna...
The most important indicators of a community’s overall health are maternal, infant and child health. It deals with the health of women of childbearing age from pre-pregnancy, labor, delivery and the postpartum period and the health of the child prior to birth up the adolescence (McKenzie & Pinger, 2015, p.192). The health data that is collected towards maternal, infant and child health are used to see the effectiveness of disease prevention and health promotion services in a community. Prenatal health care is one of the fundamentals of a safe pregnancy. An infant’s health mostly depends on the mother. A child’s during the ages of one to nine are very important to the child’s development and the future (McKenzie & Pinger, 2015, p.217). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends vaccinating children against most vaccine-preventable diseases early in life. One of the community programs for Women, Infants and Children are maternal and child health bureau, which is in charge with the responsibility for promoting and improving the health of our nations mothers and children. Another is woman, infants and children program, which is a clinic-based program designed to provide a variety of nutritional health related goods and services to pregnant, postpartum and breastfeeding women, infants up to