The Effectiveness Of The Mitigation Measures Against The Spread Of The Coronary Heart Disease - Research Paper Example

Heart Disease Specific Aims Increasing trends of Coronary Heart disease are sending an alarm to the national health heart programs department. The disease has continued to be a world killer with millions dying per year while more people continue to live with the disease. For instance, in the U.K., the National Health Service (NHS, 2013) has recorded a rate of 82,000 deaths every year and approximately 2 million people surviving with this disease. Of these, the number of men is higher than that of women, especially for those patients below the age of fifty years (Kivimäki, 2012). The aim of this research study is to investigate the effectiveness of the mitigation measures that have been instituted to intervene against the spread of the coronary heart disease. There is a tendency for some researchers to believe that heart diseases are associated only with the developed and industrialized countries. The argument is that industrialized countries have more polluted environments, which predispose its citizens to this illness (Brook, Howard, & Lipsett, 2006). The hypothesis of this paper is that personal habits such as smoking and unhealthy nutrition predispose human beings to coronary heart disease more than the environmental pollution. This hypothesis will be qualified by evaluating an industrialized country such as the United States and developing countries such as Tunisia. There is a great emphasis on cost effectiveness in the medical sector, which can only be achieved through effective medical policies (Smith and Castelli, 2006). The finding of this research will benefit this sector by recommending cost effective policies that can reduce the economic loss that results from heavy budgets allocated to cater for treatment of this heart disease. Secondly, effective policies will reduce the mortality rate significantly, which is the overall objective of the National health programs. The target population of this study is the heart disease treatment centers in the above countries. Using stratified sampling, two heart disease treatment centers will be selected for every stratum as representative of the sample population. Those among the sample population that have no adequate information will be dropped out of the sample. Research study will be implemented using a two phase approach. In the first phase, the group members will collect quantitative data from the websites of the samples population, focusing mainly on the predisposing risk behaviors, the infected population and the cost of treatment of this disease per year. The second phase will be conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed intervention measures. A quantitative analysis will be conducted using SPSS software in order to come up with the mean, correlation, and variance of the obtained data that will be useful in comparing the target population. Background and Significance Need in the target population. The study of mitigation measures against Coronary heart disease has been triggered by the alarming increase in death rates attributed to this terminal illness. In the United States, the figure of those who die from this heart disease is approximately 600 thousand per year while the vast majorities are living with the symptoms of this disease. In U.K, the figure is at 82,000 individuals per year while over 2 million have symptoms of the disease such Angina (NHS, 2013). According to a research by Kim (2011), Coronary Heart Disease contributes to about 7 million deaths every year in the world statistics, taking the largest proportion compare to other diseases. A critical evaluation of these statistics indicates that the number of males who die of this illness is much higher than that of females. These deaths deprive the country of productive citizens, as well as economic resources. The losses associated with these deaths have put pressure to researchers to delve into credible study that would reveal the real cause of this terminal illness (Bing, Haruyama, Muto, Yamasaki & Tarumi, 2013). Coronary heart diseases are characterized by thickened blood vessels which bring about the blockage of normal blood flow. There is a mutual agreement among researchers that the major causes of this disease include smoking, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, stress and blood pressure. They also agree that the most effective way of controlling the disease is by reducing the predisposing or risk factors that have escalated the chances of infection. Although industrialization has been condemned as the root cause of the disease, most undeveloped countries have continued to experience higher death rates from this disease. This leaves researchers with the question as to what the real cause of this illness is, which this research seeks to answer. This research takes a comparative approach to get to the heart of the matter in an effort to reveal the factors that accelerate the risk of catching coronary heart disease. By abstracting data from two contrasting environments, a developed and an undeveloped country, this research can explain whether it is industrialization that the health sector needs to worry about or it’s the personal habits of the people. The target population of this research will encompass the entire population of the United States and Tunisia; the two countries will be sampled and data regarding the infection rate and mortality rate will be obtained and quantitatively analyzed to provide credible conclusions. This will help to reinforce medical policies that have been instituted in efforts to achieve productive health systems. Previous research work. The American Heart Association opened an avenue for research into heart diseases after echoing the call of the American College of Cardiology that published “guidelines for preventing Heart attack and death in patients with Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular disease.” The two pointed to a concern for intervention of individual risk factors such as smoking habits, dietary, exercise activities, and industrial air pollution. In addition, there is wake up call for the government to implement cost effective health programs, based on the ratio of government economic input in the health sector to the output of the same (Smith and Castelli, 2006). This pressure has triggered many scholars to delve into research with the objective of developing more economic health models. There has been vast research as to the possible risk factors that can be associated with the increasing trend in the deaths that results from the Coronary Heart disease. One such research was conducted by Brook et al (2004) seeking to investigate as to what extent air pollution contributes to the acceleration of risk of catching the coronary heart disease. From his quantitative survey, he concluded that industrialized countries emit complex compound such as carbon monoxide and Sulphur dioxide that increase that predispose the people with heart diseases. On a different research, it was found that in England, one of the most industrialized states, the mortality rate due to heart diseases reduced by about 4% per year during the period between 1993 and 2004 (Smith and Castelli, 2006). The two researchers seem to provide contradictory information as regards the risk factors of heart diseases. While Brook et al seem to blame industrialization, Smith and Castelli research point that there is more to think about apart from industrialization of a country. Kivamaki (2012) conducted an empirical research whose quantitative results indicated that 54% of the illnesses are associated with smoking, 20% is caused by obesity while lack of exercise took 9%. From this data, it is logical to deduce that personal habits to a large extent predispose individuals to heart diseases. Research by The National heart, Lung and Blood institute (1998) paid particular attention to behavioral risk factors that predispose human beings to Coronary Heart disease. In their studies, they defined behavioral risk factors as those living elements that are influenced by an individual’s choice and tastes. This study focused particularly on cigarette smoking and diet habits among the black and white people. The results of this survey indicated that cigarette smoking and poor eating habits contributed to the increase in cancer among the black people. The rate of smoking was higher among the black people, and at the same time they exhibited the poorest eating habits. This is also reflected by a research conducted by Mackay and Crofton (2012) that warned about the risky smoking habits that are common in developing countries. These researchers pointed to the high rates of smoking, and the high tar content in the cigarettes used in these countries. Thus, it is possible to associate the increasing diagnosis of Coronary Heart Disease in the developing countries to their high rate of smoking as well as poor feeding habits that emanate from the high poverty level in these countries. This idea points to the need of shifting focus from the industrialized world to the under-developed countries, as an urgent intervention measure. Many researchers have delved into empirical studies to investigate the smoking trends in developing countries. Husten and Abdullar (2003) recommended that public health interventions strategies be instituted against smoking in third world countries. They predicted that the rate of deaths resulting from addictive smoking in these countries would be 7 million individuals per year by the year 2030. They attributed the progressive increase in tobacco smoking to the intensive cultivations of this product as a cash crop. The pressure to develop their countries has resulted into them indulging in Tobacco farming, which in turn results to higher numbers of smokers. This behavior has been linked with the increase in the statistics of heart diseases in these countries. However, they have expressed the challenges in the intervention process due to lack of proper medical infrastructure, low levels of civilization, and economic pressures evident in majority of developing countries. The evaluation of behavior risk factors seems to be the ultimate source of the solution to the problem of most heart diseases. The genetic influence on the risk of contracting Coronary Heart Disease has been considered as another crucial factor. Research indicates that there is a higher risk of infection for those who have had close family members affected with the disease (American Heart Association, 2013). For the purpose of this research, genetic influence will be treated as the moderating variable. Therefore, it will be important to pay keen attention on the family history of the infected disease in order to establish if there is any genetic effect on the statistics obtained from the sample population. From this point of view, it is true to say that findings from previous researches have not reached a concession. Though there is an agreement on the general predisposing factors, there is still much that requires to be done in order to come up with the root issues that have heightened this natural disaster (Kim, 2011). This research intends to use a quantitative model in order to obtain factual data that can help compare the situation in different countries, which have been at a different industry level, in order to end the controversy that has been created by the previous researches. The economic efficiency of the different countries will be evaluated on the basis of the percentage of the total country population that dies from heart diseases per year for each of these countries (Smith and Castelli, 2006). This will provide a basis for making a research oriented conclusion that will help in coining new policies in the health sector, in the effort of achieving efficiency in the war against heart diseases. References Abdullar, S. and Husten, C., (2003). Promotion of Smoking Cessation in Developing Countries: A framework for urgent public health interventions. An International Journal of Respiratory Medicine. 59(7) pp. 623-630. doi:10.1136/thx.2003.018820 American Heart Association, (2013). Risk scores of common genetic variants for lipid levels influence for Coronary Heart Disease. Retrieved from: < http://atvb.ahajournals.org/content/early/2013/06/13/ATVBAHA.113.301236> Bing, Z., Haruyama, Y., Muto, T., Yamasaki, A., & Tarumi, F. (2013). Evaluation of a community intervention program in Japan using Framingham risk score and estimated 10-year coronary heart disease risk as outcome variables: a non-randomized controlled trial. BMC Public Health, 13(1), 1-10. doi:10.1186/1471-2458-13-219 Brook, R., Howard, G., & Lipsett, M., (2006). Air Pollution and Cardiovascular disease. Retrieved from: Castelli, A. and Smith, P. (2006). Circulatory diseases in the NHS: Measuring Trends in Hospital costs and Output. Retrieved from :< http://www.york.ac.uk/che/ pdf/rp21.pdf> Crofton, J. and Mackay, J., (2012). Tobacco and the Developing World. Retreived from: Kim, S. (2011). Psychological Interventions and Coronary Heart Disease. International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology. 11(3) pp. 563-575 Retrieved from: Kivimäki, M. (October 2012). Job Strain as a risk factor for coronary heart disease. Lancet 380 (9852), p.1491–1497. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(12)60994-5 National Heart, Lung and Blood institute, (1998). Research in Coronary Heart Disease in Blacks. Retrieved from: National Health Service, (2013). Coronary Heart Disease in U.K. Retrieved from :< http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Coronary-heart-disease/Pages/Introduction.aspx> Read More