EPIDEMIOLOGY: DEFINE YOUR POPULATION AND SELECTED PROBLEM
Overview: This week, you will further refine your population and problem and compare your suspicions about this problem to local, state, and national data on the topic. Your practicum project should come into clear focus as you continue to analyze related health data, and you should consider how you, as the nurse, might help them avoid development of the problem in the first place (primary prevention measures).
Practicum Discussion: This week your assignment is to collect and then refine health data about the issue that affects your population group. You will use scholarly professional literature to support your ideas about the population at risk. If data is not available for your population on a local level, then use county or state data. Some examples of health data that you might consider gathering are epidemiologic information related to health conditions, reproductive outcomes, causes of death, vital statistics, socioeconomic data including poverty and/or educational levels, quality of life issues, and/or lack of access to health care due to lack of health insurance or access to providers. You will want to compare local data with state and national trends to fully understand the extent of the selected problem in your community.
RESOURCES
Be sure to review the Learning Resources before completing this activity.
Click the weekly resources link to access the resources.
WEEKLY RESOURCES
· McKenna, M. (2015).
What do we do when antibiotics don’t work anymore?
Links to an external site.
[Video]. TED conferences. https://www.ted.com/talks/maryn_mckenna_what_do_we_do_when_antibiotics_don_t_work_any_more
Note: The approximate length of this media piece is 17 minutes.
Maryn McKenna is a journalist who specializes in public health, global health, and food policy. She describes how bacteria and viruses are mutating in response to new antibiotics at an alarming rate.
· TEDx Talks. (2014, October 20).
Will the poor always be with us?
Links to an external site.
[Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHQes6P5XnQ
Note: The approximate length of this media piece is 10 minutes.
Jim Yong Kim talks about his vision of transformation for development, drawing on his personal experience as an activist and AIDs researcher. He shares why ending poverty is possible in our lifetimes and concludes that the poor will not always be with us.
· Stanhope, M., & Lancaster, J. (2020).
Public health nursing: Population-centered health care in the community (10th ed.). Elsevier.
· Chapter 6, “Environmental Health” (pp. 121-148)
· Chapter 13, “Epidemiology” (pp. 269-298)
· Chapter 14, “Infectious Disease Prevention and Control” (pp. 299-332)
· Chapter 15, “Communicable and Infectious Disease Risks” (pp. 333-355)
· Chapter 17, “Community as Client: Assessment and Analysis” (pp. 370-394)
· Zuñiga, J. A., Muñoz, S. E., Johnson, M. Z., & Garcia, A. (2014).
Tuberculosis Treatment for Mexican Americans Living on the U.S.-Mexico BorderLinks to an external site.
.
Journal Of Nursing Scholarship, 46(4), 253-262. http://doi.org/10.1111/jnu.12071
·
CDC WonderLinks to an external site.
. (2020). Retrieved from http://wonder.cdc.gov/
Post your response to the following:
· Describe the specific health problem and population you have selected.
· What data did you find to support your decision? Refine and clarify the problem and population.
· What useful health data and public health websites did you locate to support your position?
· What other evidence did you find? You can include scholarly articles in this discussion.
Support your response with references from professional nursing literature.
Read two or more of your colleagues’ postings from the Discussion question. As a community of practice, help each other refine and clarify the health problem remembering that this project focuses on primary prevention strategies at the community and system level of care.
Respond to at least two colleagues. Your responses should be substantial and should contribute ideas, tools, alternate points of view, resources, and information related to identified health problems.
For all posts, be sure to use
evidenceLinks to an external site. from the readings and include
in-text citationsLinks to an external site.
. Avoid quotes;
paraphraseLinks to an external site. to incorporate evidence into your own writing. A
reference listLinks to an external site.
is required. Use the most
current evidenceLinks to an external site.
(usually ≤ 5 years old).
Romina Alejandra Dana
Population Selected
The population I selected for my project are African American women 50 years of age and older with a perpetual incidence of hypertension and sometimes with high cholesterol and diabetes which makes a dangerous combination. My goal is instruction and awareness in self-primary prevention.
Determinant for Hypertension
Hypertension makes people at high risk for cardiovascular disease to name a few, and black women have the most significant levels of hypertension compared to other ethnic groups. I believe one of the reasons for this disproportion can be process and fast-food diet, emotional intensity in the way they experience emotions, and lack of attention to food preparation due to a hectic lifestyle.
My primary suspicion about early disease causatives like cardiovascular disease, stroke, and even some types of cancer was based on the hypothesis that middle age women especially of African descent but also Caucasians, who suffer from the potential for hypertension are the contributing aspect of a negative effect on the pathophysiology and normal functioning of the body.
According to the National Library of medicine in the article “Women’s Health” racial and ethnic minorities suffer disproportionately high rates of hypertension and hypertension-related morbidity and mortality.
My assumption is based on that as women grow older and they gain weight their cholesterol also increases, and now in a hectic lifestyle with spouses, children, schools assignments, work, and survival, the degree of stress with all these contributors results in that middle age African American women are in high risk for stress and anxiety and consequently hypertension.
Nursing Interventions
Meditation and mindfulness-based interventions are very helpful. My proposal to decrease the incidence of this physiological malfunctioning is based on education, instruction, and awareness of the potential for this situation by using emerging therapeutic interventions instead of delivering drugs as a primary line of care. During my last week practicum, I expanded some knowledge and understanding of the reason why medical providers haste to prescribe pharmaceuticals as the main line of prevention and management, as well as not to always make testing on viral vs bacterium infections like it would be a sputum test or strep swabbing. According to my preceptor, the insurance will not be happy with so much testing. After three consecutive visits with an abnormal blood pressure reading, the nurse practitioner cannot take chances that can result in a catastrophic result. The practitioner is held accountable if the right medication and dosage were not prescribed to a patient with elevated blood pressure and a bad outcome results in harm, that’s why non-medical therapeutic interventions will not be sufficient under the Florida health system.
Citatiion
Kalinowski J, Kaur K, Newsome-Garcia V, Langford A, Kalejaiye A, Vieira D, Izeogu C, Blanc J, Taylor J, Ogedegbe O, Spruill T. Stress interventions and hypertension in Black women. Womens Health (Lond). 2021 Jan-Dec;17:17455065211009751. doi: 10.1177/17455065211009751. PMID: 34254559; PMCID: PMC8280834.
Serena Hulsey
“Describe the specific health problem and population you have selected.”
The prevalence of childhood and teenage obesity in the United States is a major public health issue. Although more common in boys, it affects both sexes. Researchers Sanyaolu et al. (2019) and Wang et al. (2020) found that the rates of overweight, obesity and central obesity have all risen steadily in the United States during the past few decades. Overweight children and adolescents are at a greater risk than their normal-weight counterparts for serious health problems.
“What data did you find to support your decision? Refine and clarify the problem and population.”
Research on childhood and teenage obesity in the United States can illuminate this subject. Sanyaolu et al. (2019)’s first study indicated that the rate of childhood and adolescent obesity in the United States has been rising for decades, with a rate of 18.5% among adolescents aged 12-19. Wang et al. (2020) discovered that the rate at which Americans become overweight or obese stabilized between 2009–2010 and 2015–2016. More research into the effects of obesity on diverse subpopulations of children and adolescents in the United States, such as by gender, race, and age, can help refine and define the problem and population. The long-term effects of childhood and teenage obesity on health and the measures that can be taken to curb its prevalence are equally worthy of investigation.
“What useful health data and public health websites did you locate to support your position?”
After conducting a literature review, I was able to locate pertinent health data and public health websites to support my position on the issue of childhood and adolescent obesity in the United States. Statistics on the prevalence of overweight and obesity in American children and adolescents aged 2 to 19 were also retrieved from the “National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES)” database. To learn more about the epidemic of kid and adolescent obesity that happened between the years 2000 and 2015, I also consulted the “World Health Organization’s (WHO) Global Database” on “Child Growth and Malnutrition.” Finally, I visited the website of the “National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases” in search of data on the prevalence of childhood obesity from 1999 to 2019. These websites give excellent health data and public health resources to support my thesis that childhood and teenage obesity is a public health concern in the United States.
“What other evidence did you find?”
The course readings revealed more information about the prevalence of obesity in children and teenagers. There is a higher-than-average risk of obesity, for example, among children of certain ethnicities, children of low-income households, and children living in rural areas. According to studies, many children are overweight because they don’t exercise or eat healthily. Finally, research has identified several social and environmental factors that may contribute to kid obesity, such as ready access to unhealthy meals, a scarcity of healthy food options, and a lack of safe physical activity places.
References
Sanyaolu, A., Okorie, C., Qi, X., Locke, J., & Rehman, S. (2019). Childhood and adolescent obesity in the United States: a public health concern. Global pediatric health, 6, 2333794X19891305.
Wang, Y., Beydoun, M. A., Min, J., Xue, H., Kaminsky, L. A., & Cheskin, L. J. (2020). Has the prevalence of overweight, obesity, and central obesity leveled off in the United States? Trends, patterns, disparities, and future projections for the obesity epidemic. International journal of epidemiology, 49(3), 810-823.
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