Children Communicable Diseases - Research Paper Example

Children Communicable Diseases Introduction Effective Maternal and Child Health (MCH) practice needs application of skills that involves a combination of frameworks and theoretical models supporting systems that address the health needs of children. Communicable diseases, especially those that are mostly contagious, are rapidly increasing as witnessed by the emergence of viruses, for instance, severe acute respiratory syndrome. Just as contagious diseases are mostly transmitted from one person to another, so too a passage can occur from one child to the other. Therefore, there is a need for developing effective infectious disease control mechanism among the children at the national scale. The effective being the operative terms that are not enforceable (Battin, Francis, & Smith, 2009).This paper describes children communicable diseases with respect to Life Course Theory, Maternal and Child Health Pyramid of Health Sciences and Health Impact Pyramid. Section One: Background Epidemiology of the MCH-Children Communicable Diseases Communicable diseases, especially those that are mostly contagious, take on social significance because their ability to spread often depends on social interactions. Their ethical significance is, therefore, intimately related to the extent, quality, care, and nature with which there is a need to attend to those social interactions among the children. Mostly, children who fell sick always can create challenges and many problems in setting of groups. These setting up of groups can be done in schools. Therefore, children always are demanding a lot of attention from the teachers or nannies who take care of them and those who cannot fully participate in educational activities as well as group. The worst is that children with a communicable disease can spread the illness to other kids. As a result, it is important to the day care providers and educators to control the spreading of communicable diseases by effective, safe, and practical efforts. This is because those who are affected most are school going children since they interact indiscriminately. Control of communicable diseases in day care and school settings is of utmost significance. Provision of safe, healthy environment and comfortable enhance the process of education, facilitates social development and enable kids to acquire healthy attitudes toward organized settings (Pies, Parthasarathy& Kotelchuck, 2009). Health Impact Pyramid The Health Impact Pyramid is a graph representation of tiers of influence that might have resulted from public health interventions. Working down the pyramid from its top, the first level of the pyramid includes counseling and education interventions. These require the most individual effort and are implemented in one-on-one settings such as classroom setting of the children. For instance, counseling and education interventions include nutritional counseling for weight loss, smoking cessation, and safe-sex education. Clinical interventions are the second level of the pyramid that includes on-going clinical interventions to prevent disease and promote health. Its application in the context of children communicable diseases, Health Impact Pyramid, would be an instrument in crafting such an infectious disease. It can recognize the fluidity with which people or children shift from being infectious to becoming infected and encourages an exalted sense of rights as patients to control medical destinies. It can also provide the basis for protecting individuals and children from becoming ill as well about what responsibilities need to be done to for protecting the health of others( Munson, 2008). Life Course Theory Life Course Theory (LCT) takes a longitudinal approach to understanding health improvement focusing on the impact of MCH programs and policies across the lifespan of children. LCT also stresses that barriers to health, including economic disparities and health inequity, in the early development of life have implication on the health trajectories of children as they mature into adolescents and adults. Key to LCT is the understanding that events that take place early in one’s life have consequences for one’s future health and development. There are also opportunities to address MCH needs at different stages of an individual’s development from birth, through early childhood and adolescence, and adulthood. Life course theory purports to give resolutions to the question of to whom some duties or beneficiary are owed or must be considered. It also provides vocabulary for describing a situation in which children are at risk of contracting communicable disease from others and also communicating a disease to others. It, therefore, provides a means of resolving the ethical dilemmas that such situations can create (Martin, 2007). In real sense, acceptance of this theory has numerous implications for the way a child health is considered. In addition, for the training of children caregivers for the way health systems are developed to cater for individuals’ health care needs. It stresses the significance of all ages and stages of life and acknowledges the inter generational context within which children exist. Recognizes the temporal dimension of health and aging, rather than just distinct episodes of illness; personalizes and humanizes ill health as part of a life process. In terms of disease, it emphasizes health promotion, disease prevention, and cure and disease management throughout the life. It can as well as it help in making certain balances in teaching (Lu, Kotelchuck, & Hogan, 2010). The MCH Pyramid of Health Services The MCH Pyramid of Health Services was developed by the federal Maternal & Child Health Bureau. The MCH Pyramid of Health Services is framework for understanding the four tiers of Title services and funding that comprehensively address the health needs of children in their jurisdictions. The top tier of the MCH Pyramid of Health Services includes gap-filling ‘‘direct health care services’’ not provided to children through any other program and includes basic health services for children, including those with special health care needs (Bureau., 2010). The enabling services tier includes ancillary or wraps around services that make direct health services more efficient or effective. It includes activities such as transportation, translation, outreach, respite care, health education, family support, case management, and coordination of other programs. Population-based services, the third tier, includes community-wide initiatives to address MCH needs such as newborn screening, lead screening, immunization, counseling, oral health promotion, and community injury prevention efforts. At the bottom of the pyramid are the foundational activities of public health infrastructure. These include planning, evaluation, needs assessment, monitoring, quality assurance, standards development, training, technology, and policy development (MCH Leadership Competencies Workgroup, 2009). A significant assumption of the pyramid framework is that effective MCH practice necessarily incorporates initiatives and activities at all four tiers of service to adequately address MCH health needs. Childhood obesity and prevention of pre-term birth provide examples of why a comprehensive approach is required (Coeytaux, Bingham, & Strauss, 2010). Services provided at just one tier of the pyramid to address these pressing MCH issue cannot alone address all aspects of them. For example, there are a limited number of direct service or medical interventions to address the growing epidemic of children communicable diseases, and community awareness of prematurity through television and print media will inform the public about the issue but may not change patient or physician behavior. To achieve the most health improvement in these critical areas of MCH practice, MCH professionals must necessarily assure that programs and policies are supported by all four-service tiers of the pyramid. Section Three: Framework Chosen There are values that can be gotten in acknowledging the significance of adoption of LCT to Maternal and Child Health issue, for instance, communicable diseases, exploring the challenge raised and addressing the problems that result. In the education and training of day care providers and the teachers, a life course approach provides the potential to enhance the integration of teaching. It also prepares the caregivers as well as teachers(Grason & Misra, 2006). An LCT emphasizes a social perspective and temporal, examining across children backgrounds, as well as patterns of disease and health. In epidemiology, LCT would be applied in studying the social and physical hazards during the childhood stage that might affect chronic disease risk and outcomes of health later stages of life. It is aiming to identify the underlying behavioral, biological, and psychosocial processes that are operating across the lifespan of the child. References Battin,, M. L., Francis, , J. J., & Smith, C. (2009). The Patient as Victim and Vector. Ethics and Infectious Disease. Bureau., M. (2010). Rethinking MCH: The Life Course Model as an Organizing Framework Concept Paper. Rockville, MD: Health Resources and Services Administration. Coeytaux, F., Bingham, D.,& Strauss, N. (2010). Maternal Mortality in the United States: A Human Rights Failure. www.healthcare-now.org, Accessed 14th February, 2015. Grason, H., & Misra, D. P. (2006). Application of a life course approach. Baltimore, MD: Women’s and Children’s Health Policy(pp. 44-65). Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Lu, M. C., Kotelchuck,, M., & Hogan, , V. (2010). Closing the black-white gap in birth outcomes: A life-course approach. Ethnicity and Disease,, 20(5). Martin,, R. (2007). Promoting and Protecting Public Health. Always in Our Best Interests?” Public Health, 121(11), 846-853. MCH Leadership Competencies Workgroup (2009). Maternal and child health leadership competencies http://leadership.mchtraining.net/mchlc_docs/mch_leadership_ comp_3-0.pdf, accessed 14th February, 2015. Munson,, R. (2008). Intervention and Reflection: Basic Issues in Medical Ethics. 90-91. T., F. (2010). A framework for public health action: The Health Impact Pyramid. American Journal of Public Health,, 100(4), 590–595. Pies, C., Parthasarathy, P., & Kotelchuck, M, (2009).Making a paradigm shift in maternal and child health: Conference proceedings http://cchealth.org/groups/lifecourse/pdf/2009_10_meeting_report_final.pdf,retrieved14th February, 2015. Read More