A Management Action Plan to Reduce Heart Diseases - Research Paper Example

A Management Action Plan to Reduce Heart Diseases among U.S Citizens Problem According to National Center for Health (2012), most residents in the United States of America do not get the desired health care as much as the country allocates more money to health care. At the individual level, the United States of America spends more money in meeting the health care needs of an individual than any nation on the globe. This is because the country underutilizes preventive care. Consequently, the country spends higher amounts of money on complex diseases at their advanced stages. This paper presents an action plan that can be used to reduce heart diseases. Martin (2010) observes that the most affected are persons with chronic ailments like stroke, heart diseases, diabetes and hypertension. These groups of patient witnesses to major problems in accessing health care services. One of them is that such patients are not accorded effective treatment regimes in the form of drug therapies. Further, there are weak individual management services that can make them handle their conditions at the individual level. In particular, the under insured, uninsured and the insured problems met these challenges with the uninsured being the most vulnerable. The fact that care is not coordinated for people with such chronic diseases makes matters even worse. Fragmentation of the health care is one of the reasons behind the why health care providers are incapable of providing an improved patient care among U.S citizens (Culler &Yoon, 2010). Immediate management action is needed so that recurrence of these chronic diseases is minimized in the future. Failure to address these health problems could have serious consequences to the individuals and to the nation at large. Martin (2010) argues that lack of an effective health care system for heart diseases and stroke will become an obstacle for America in achieving a strong economic growth. This is because economic growth is influenced by health of individuals. If the citizens can be healthy, they would contribute significantly towards the growth of a nation. Since the treatments of such conditions are expensive, most persons would be rendered incapable of managing such conditions. At the end, most of them may die due to lack of essential services. The anticipated outcome of this plan reduces incidences of stroke and heart diseases in the long run. Additionally, the management action plan also seeks to ensure that the few incidences of persons with such diseases will be capable of managing their conditions. Thus, the accomplishments that this action plan tends to accomplish are enhanced prevention, treatment, manage and control of heart diseases. Among the strategies in the plan is how universal health care scheme can be used to offer solutions to the United States of America citizens that have stroke and heart diseases. However, there are some constraints that are likely to be encountered during these management actions. One of them regards resources. There may be limited resources to carry out the tests to ascertain the type of heart diseases. Additionally, most of the chronic diseases come by because of habits. Some of the habits that can result to heart diseases include smoking, overeating, alcohol intake and sedentary lifestyle. Thus, a lot of time is needed to follow the patient. In addition, the patients may take a lot of time to revert to the desired behaviors and this will mean more money and time being devoted to ensure that the task of behavior change is attained. Management of chronic diseases requires a lot of investment in the machines, drugs and medical personnel required to monitor and treat the patients. Machines that act as artificial hearts are very expensive to acquire. This means that if a heart and stroke care center is to be made available, more money would be incurred. In instances where patients are bedridden for more than a month, the bills could be more expensive. Measurable Goal Freedman and Dietz (2007) claim that some of the causes of heart diseases include smoking and physical inactivity. Smokers are prone to contract heart diseases than non-smokers. This is because they are likely to witness cardiac death because of acute thrombosis. Diets high in a lot low density lipoprotein, physical inactivity and obesity also cause heart diseases. They also predispose one to contracting diabetes mellitus and cancers (Haplin, Varela & Moreno, 2010). Most Americans diets are high in animal fats, sugars yet they don’t indulge in physical activities. Computers, cars and televisions have limited their involvement in physical activities. Hence, the amount of energy taken is less than that dispensed leading to weight gain or obesity. Physical activity can be a remedy for lowering blood pressure and obesity reduction (National center for health, 2012). Obesity elevates the level of low density lipoprotein besides affecting the cardiac muscles ultimately leading to heart diseases. Some of the interventions would be regular checkup of lipid, and glucose profile by physicians to ascertain the vulnerability to heart diseases. Other clinical support services such as counseling on behavior change, nurse’s involvement in providing palliative care are also handy. Counseling can be used in the prevention of tobacco and alcohol use and in increasing the level of physical activity. Programs that are community based should be used to prevent heart diseases. These include social support, training nurses, community education, reforms in health care delivery systems and health promotion. Finally, more robust policies to guarantee financial allocation are helpful in the management of heart diseases (Harrist & Dai, 2009). Priority and key action step CDC (2011) suggests that there are several action plans that are necessary to weed out or minimize the heart diseases. They include developing policies that can be handy in combating heart diseases at local, state and national level, promoting sound cardiovascular health aimed at preventing heart diseases in diverse settings, agencies of public health will be strengthened in laboratory diagnosis. Other steps include providing opportunities to allow for trainings, reaping the benefits that accrue from the global and regional partners information in heart diseases prevention and integrating global and regional partner’s role in the management of heart diseases, offering archetypal standards in heart disease prevention and provision of technical support and consultation, setting the criteria in addition to health standards that would be useful in the management action plan, continuous upgrading of sources of heath data to assist in the evaluation program interventions and policies, exploring the roles of high blood pressure, genetics, biomarkers and atherosclerosis in the development of heart diseases and evaluation using innovative ways. Upgrading the sources of health data can be omitted without affecting the output of the project. This is because it involves evaluation which is usually conducted without regardless of whether health data is upgraded or not. Organize the key action steps The firsts step will be to develop policies that can be handy in combating heart diseases at local, state and national level. This will guarantee a public health action that is effective also enhance safety therapies for reducing risk factors. The policies needs to be implemented in time and evaluations conducted. The second action step would be to promote sound cardiovascular health aimed at preventing heart diseases in diverse settings for the entire population with great emphasis being laid on vulnerable populations. Thirdly, agencies of public health will be strengthened to enable them maintain sufficient competencies in areas such as laboratory diagnosis. Thereafter, the next step will involve providing opportunities to allow for trainings, offering archetypal standards in heart disease prevention and provision of technical support and consultation. At the fifth stage, it would be important to set the criteria in addition to health standards that would be useful in the management action plan. These will be integrated to fit in the long term monitoring of the action plan. The sixth stage will involve continuous upgrading of sources of health data to assist in the evaluation program interventions and policies. The seventh stage will focus on the roles of high blood pressure, genetics, biomarkers and atherosclerosis in the development of heart diseases. This will be made possible through continuous research on all vulnerable populations to get an insight into the subject being investigated. The eighth stage will involve evaluation using innovative ways. Evaluation at this stage will focus on policies aimed at health promotion and changes in the environment. The second last stage will involve the reaping the benefits that accrue from the global and regional partners information in heart disease prevention. The final stage will aim at integrating global and regional partner’s role in the management of heart diseases. This will ensure that the role of globalization in the prevention of heart diseases is well understood and managed. Before these steps are implemented, a clear work plan needs to be put in place detailing all the resources including mobilization of stakeholders. In additional, ethical approval is needed for permission for the work to be allowed. This plan can further be synthesized as follows; Action taking to combat heart diseases, strengthening the capacity of shareholders in the response, advancement of policies, involvement of regional and international partners and final evaluation of the impacts of the action plan. Accountability Activities Departments involved Dates to be completed Develop policies that can be handy in combating heart diseases National Health Institute January 2014 Promote sound cardiovascular health aimed at preventing heart diseases in diverse settings for the entire population Nursing department in health care centers March 2014 Public health strengthening to enable them maintain sufficient competencies in areas such as laboratory diagnosis Centers for disease control March 2014 Providing opportunities to allow for trainings, offering archetypal standards in heart disease prevention and provision of technical support and consultation. Directors of health centers April 2014 Setting the criteria in health standards, continuous upgrading of sources of health data to assist in the evaluation program interventions and policies and establishing the roles of high blood pressure, genetics, biomarkers and atherosclerosis in the development of heart diseases. National health institute May 2014 Evaluation using innovative ways, then reaping the benefits that accrue from the global and regional partners information in heart disease prevention and integrating global and regional partner’s role in the management of heart diseases. National health institute, Centers for disease control and health institutions August 2014 Monitoring Monitoring and evaluation will be done both at the end of the program and during the program. Experts from the national health centers and centers for disease control will be involved in the evaluation process. All data used in the communication of heart diseases messages will be monitored. Their strengths and limitations in handling the problem at hand will be looked into. Process evaluation will be used to identify gaps in the action plan and recommend actions to ensure that the entire system is improved. The systems in place for management of heart diseases will be also be evaluated to ascertain their effectiveness. Adaptations will be tailored in regard to the changing needs of the patients. The percentage change in incidences of heart diseases will be looked at during the evaluation process too. CDC (2011) appreciates that relapse is one a major challenge in action plans that will need to be addressed in our case. Relapse will be prevented by identifying internal triggers to behaviors and actions that can make acquire heart diseases and helping the patients to handle them well. The patients will be advised to indulge into some form of physical exercise every day at home. Counselors will be availed to help them in the process. The counselors will provide social support for them. The availability of counselors will help them provide avenues for sharing their obstacles to attaining a better health. Such strategies will ultimately lead to increased program output. The patients will be encouraged to involve themselves in physical activities when they are free. This will not only enable them to burn excess calories but also divert their attention form habits like smoking which predisposes persons to heart diseases. References CDC. (2011).A Public Health Action Plan to Prevent Heart Disease and Stroke.  Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Culler, S. & Yoon, P. (2010) Is There an Association Between Quality of In-Hospital Cardiac Care and Proportion of Low-Income Patients? Medical Care; 48:273-248 Freedman, D. S., & Dietz, W. H. (2007). Cardiovascular risk factors and excess adiposity among overweight children and adolescents: the Bogalusa Heart Study. Journal of Pediatrics; 150 (1):12–17. Harrist, R.B., & Dai, S. (2009) Analytic methods in Project Heartbeat! .American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 37(1):S17-S24 Halpin, H. A., Varela, M. M., & Moreno, J. M. (2010). Chronic disease prevention and the New Public Health. Public Health Reviews; 32:120-154 National Center for Health Statistics (2012). Health, United States, 2011: With Special Features on Socioeconomic Status and Health. Hyattsville, MD; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Martin, M.K. (2010). "The political economy of universal health coverage". Global symposium on health systems research. Read More