Health Promotion Essay: Asthma in Moorabool Shire Community

Question

Task: This health promotion essay is designed to develop a capacity to identify research and critically analyse the key concepts within health promotion and health education as it relates to the role of the professional nurse. Discuss how and why your population is vulnerable, and what determinants of health contribute to this. Your writing should include discussion of the nurse’s role with regards to health education, empowerment and health literacy, and how these factors may influence care for this group of people. You should also mention the connection to health promotion, community health and primary health care.

Answer

Introduction
This health promotion essay will critically discuss the issues related to Asthma in the Moorabool Shire Community between the age group of 0-14. Asthma is considered to be one of the major non-communicable diseases. This means that asthma is such a disease the does not transfer from one person to another. Though it is a non-communicable disease, asthma can cause severe issues by narrowing and inflaming the air passage of the lungs. In the year 2016, the global count of people having asthma was estimated to be more than 339 million. This essay will critically analyse the health issues related to asthma in Moorabool Shire Community and discuss why the children of 0-14 year's age group are vulnerable to asthma. The essay will also discuss the role of nurses and their influence on children between 0-14 years. Lastly, this essay will analyse how nurses can promote healthcare and what change will their services bring to the community.

Argument Development and Evidence
Determinants of Asthma among Children of 0-14 years of age
Asthma that prevails among children and adults is the same, but its symptoms are different. The inflammation of the lung in the case of childhood asthma is severe when they suffer from cold. There are several determinants of asthma among children of 0-14 years of age, such as pollution, weather, indoor factor and parental smoking.

Pollution:Pollution is one of the significant factors that contribute to the occurrence of asthma among the children of the Moorabool Shire Community. According to Knibbs et al. (2018), if children are exposed to air pollution for a long time, their reparatory organs can be severely affected. This is because the respiratory organs of children are not as vital as the adults.

Weather: Another determinant of asthma among the children is the weather because Moorabool Shire Community is an extremely hot place. This is a significant determinant because, according to Tomlinson (2020), if the weather gets hotter, then there are high chances of asthma attack among children.

Indoor factor: There are several indoor factors that trigger asthma among children, such as dust mites, pests, household pets and so on. Children are vulnerable to these indoor factors because their immune system is not well developed, making them open to the risk of an asthma attack.

Parental Smoking: A child can have asthma if his or her parents have a smoking habit. Along with that, if the mother smokes during pregnancy and while the child is still young, then the risk of asthma is very high.

Role of the Nurses
Health Education: The role of the nurses is to provide health education regarding child asthma in the Moorabool Shire Community. According to Qiu et al. (2017), they can do this through verbal methods, where they can gather a group of people and verbally tell them about childhood asthma. Another method of health education is the demonstration of how something functions, and this is very crucial while educating people about asthma. They can demonstrate how to correctly use an inhaler to the patients and their family because children can often hurt themselves with the inhaler.

Empowerment: Nurses play a vital role in empowering the asthma patients of the Moorabool Shire Community. This is because, through empowerment, a nurse can help the patient to manage their asthma level. The nurses need to ensure that their patients are treated individuallywith a focus on their specific asthma issues. This will help the nurses as well as their patients to manage their problems related to asthma effectively. Individual attention is vital for patient empowerment because if asthma education cannot be grouped because each individual has different types of asthma issue.

Health Literacy: Health literacy is essential for people to maintain good health because if there is low health literacy, then there are higher chances of people having poor health. According to Loan et al. (2018), nurses have both direct and indirect influence on health literacy because they act as the leaders who promotes health transformation of the public. Nurses provide health literacy by the teach-back method through which they can improve the understanding of the patients regarding their health issues.

However, these nursing roles of Moorabool Shire Communities vary from other communities because all the communities do not have the same procedures for health care. Since Moorabool Shire Community is situated in Australia, nursing in Australia is very much influenced by the training system in Britain. This is the reason the nursing role of the Moorabool Shire Community is different from the nursing role of other communities in the world.

Impact of Health Education, Empowerment and Health Literacy
There is a significant impact on nurse's role in the Moorabool Shire Community. According to Hahn & Truman(2015), primary health education is a fundamental element for staying healthy. Since the target group in this review essay is children between the ages of 0-14 years. By providing health education to the children and their parents, nurses can minimise the risk of severe issues of asthma among children. The significant impact of health education is the promotion of public health and safety in the Moorabool Shire Community.

There is also a significant impact of patient empowerment because when nurses empower their patients, there are chances that the patients will have improved health outcomes than the patients who are not empowered. This is because an empowered patient and efficient practice the follow-up care routine by themselves after being discharged from the hospital. According to Nutbeam et al. (2017),the core impact of health literacy is that it helps the people of Moorabool Shire Community to make appropriate decisions related to asthma issues of the children. With the intervention of government initiatives, it has been easy to implement health literacy in this community that has had a positive impact on the health of the children.

Health Promotion
Through all these roles, the contribution of nurses in health promotion is significant in the Moorabool Shire Community. This is because, according to Dharmage et al. (2019), nurses provide knowledge regarding the improvement of healthy behaviour among children. Since the immunity system of children is not fully developed, it is very crucial for them and their parents to learn about healthy behaviour. Along with that, nurses promotes a healthy lifestyle by acting as a leader or a role model for their patients. Therefore, nurses tend to play a very vital role in health promotion, which results in the prevention of asthma attack and treatment of asthma issues.

Moorabool Shire Community has initiated recreational activities, participation in community activities, community facilities, early year services and social planning for health promotion. They have also initiated health promotion programs for children and their families with the objective of providing check-up for children at their development stage. To promote healthy living among children, the Moorabool Shire Community has implemented various programs such as healthy eating and active living where the people of Mooralbool engage themselves in different sporting activities(Moorabool Shire Council, 2019). Another program is the “Walk to School Month and Active April”, where the families encourage their children to walk or scoot to the school every day.

Changes in the Community
The biggest and the apparent change that the role of the nurses brings in the community is the enhancement and improvement of health in the community. According to Subbiah(2017), a nurse working in a community and providing their services introduce changes in their everyday practice. Through participation, resistance, timeliness, flexibility, interdependence and understanding, nurses can effectively bring changes in a community. Through their roles and services towards the community, such as direct treatment, consultation, health education and follow-up treatment, nurses ensure the well-being of the community. Moorabool Shire Community can implement healthy lifestyles through the nurses working in their community.

Nurses drive changes in the Moorabool Shire community by providing them education regarding the issues related to childhood asthma. Through nurses' work in a hospital, their daily roles and services of public health care can influence the whole community. They also improve the quality of life in a community by providing them with quality services to decrease the length of hospital stay. Most importantly, nurses change the lives of the people with their care and services towards a community(LoPresti, 2015).

Conclusion
In conclusion, it can be said that nurses play a vital role in the management and treatment of asthma issues among children of 0-14 years in Moorabool Shire Community. The children of this age group are vulnerable to asthma because of factors like pollution, hot weather, smoking habits of their parent and several indoor factors. Despite being a non-communicable disease, asthma is a severe and chronic disease that blocks the air passage of children. For this reason, the role of nurses in advocating the issues of childhood asthma is vital, and the Moorabool Shire Community has introduced and implemented programs for health promotion. The nurses’ can provide health education, empowerment and literacy so that the children and their parents can work together towards managing the issues related to asthma. These roles of the nurses also have a significant impact, which helps the patients to recover faster and stay healthy. Due to which the community can change and have a better health quality and improve their lifestyle.

References
Dharmage, S. C., Perret, J. L., &Custovic, A. (2019).Epidemiology of Asthma in Children and Adults.Frontiers in Pediatrics, 7. https://doi.org/10.3389/fped.2019.00246

Hahn, R. A., & Truman, B. I. (2015). Education Improves Public Health and Promotes Health Equity. International Journal of Health Services, 45(4), 657–678. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020731415585986

Knibbs, L. D., Cortés de Waterman, A. M., Toelle, B. G., Guo, Y., Denison, L., Jalaludin, B., Marks, G. B., & Williams, G. M. (2018). The Australian Child Health and Air Pollution Study (ACHAPS): A national population-based cross-sectional study of long-term exposure to outdoor air pollution, asthma, and lung function. Environment International, 120, 394–403. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2018.08.025

Loan, L. A., Parnell, T. A., Stichler, J. F., Boyle, D. K., Allen, P., VanFosson, C. A., & Barton, A. J. (2018). Call for action: Nurses must play a critical role to enhance health literacy. Nursing Outlook, 66(1), 97–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.outlook.2017.11.003

LoPresti, J. (2015). 5 Ways Nurses Are Making a Difference. Healthcaredailyonline.com. https://www.healthcaredailyonline.com/5-ways-nurses-are-making-a-difference/#:~:text=Nurses%20can%20make%20an%20incredible

Mooralbool Shire Council.(2019). Healthy Eating and Active Living | Moorabool Shire Council. Www.moorabool.vic.gov.au. https://www.moorabool.vic.gov.au/residents/family-services/health-and-wellbeing/healthy-eating-and-active-living

Nutbeam, D., McGill, B., &Premkumar, P. (2017).Improving health literacy in community populations: a review of progress.Health Promotion International, 33(5), 901–911. https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/dax015

Qiu, B., Huang, L., & Li, Y. (2017).HEALTH EDUCATION FOR ASTHMATIC PATIENTS AND CAREGIVERS FROM NURSING PERSPECTIVE. https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/138328/LI%20YONGJIAO.pdf?isAllowed=y&sequence=1

Subbiah, K. (2017). (PDF) Role of community health nurse as a change agent.ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317101866_Role_of_community_health_nurse_as_a_change_agent

Tomlinson, R. (2020). Manage Your Child’s Asthma in the Summer Heat and Humidity. Www.iowaclinic.com. https://www.iowaclinic.com/pediatrics/manage-your-childs-asthma-summer-heat-humidity/#:~:text=Extreme%20Heat&text=But%20the%20hotter%20it%20gets