Promoting Public Health Literacy - Case Study Example

Running Head: HEALTH LITERACY Promoting Public Health Literacy: A Case Study Client Inserts His/her Name Client Inserts Name of Institution Promoting Public Health Literacy: A Case Study Proper health in a society as a whole is one of the most important aspects of a community. Virtually all governments across the globe recognize public health as one of the strategies to ensure a healthy working population, recognition of which leads to their forming of health-specific sectors (Schillinger & Bindman, 2004, p. 370). Schillinger and Bindman (2004, p. 370) further contend that the respective health sectors are mandated to ensure proper health for all in a particular nation. There are several strategies that health authorities employ to ensure the public gets health services. One of the strategies is provision of primary health care (PHC), a health care approach that ensures that the public not only gets curative services but also gets preventive, rehabilitative, supportive, and health promoting services (Nutbeam, 2008, p. 2075). The logic thereof is that while people with health adversities receive treatments of the respective diseases, advisory services are simultaneously provided specifically to prevent similar occurrences (Boston University Medical Campus [BUMC], 2011) and generally to feed the public with relevant information on how to handle health issues independently. Many a times, it is expected that the public has inherent health literacy and/or an individual technically knows how to prevent particular diseases, identify a sick individual (including children, by noting some detectable clinical signs) and act (Janet, 2011, pp. 699/70). However, this belief is only hypothetical and from medical practice vantage point, health illiteracy is evident among different regions of the world (Nutbeam, 2008, p. 2078). Concerned, World Health Organization found it necessary for medical practitioners attending the public to provide health literacy services along other medical services in the region he or she is mandated to serve (Bryan, 2008, pp. 230/1). This study focuses on ways in which a registered nurse can induce health literacy to the community he or she serves. In this context, health literacy is taken to mean the ability of an individual to read, write and interpret medical writings about a disease, therapy prescriptions, and to act in case of an ailment emergence among others, and to pass medical information correctly to other people (Nutbeam, 2008, p. 2072; Janet, 2011, p. 702). The study will involve an example of a child health nurse working in an urban low socio-economic area with single parent women who demonstrate limited or negative interactions with their children. It will as well provide suggestions of an ideal nurse’s approaches to deal with a single client as well as with a large group of clients. Often, a low socio-economic urban setting depicts a financially unstable society. Mostly, such places occur as ghettos, slums and the likes, associated with poverty and dirty streets. Best examples are parts of many African cities among others in developing countries globally (Nutbeam, 2008, p. 2073). Health issues are at a high rate ignored and only passively appreciated not only by the society but also by the respective governments. The major reasons are financial incapacities of the society and their governments, poor methods of dissemination of public services (Janet, 2011, p. 700) and in particular public education and ignorance altogether (Rudd, 2005, pp. 69/70). The public is associated with a wide range and multiple economic activities that seemingly overshadow the very important health concerns. On average, total illiteracy and semi-literacy are additional characteristics of these societies that fuel ignorance to health matters (BUMC, 2011, p. 12). The case in this study introduces another scenario of single parenthood that obviously predisposes override of social responsibilities that further worsens the situation. The efficacy of the approach a concerned health practitioner employs in such a society depends on the above reiterated factors. Health of small children in particular becomes one of the roles of the adults and therefore the health clients will consist of adults. A registered nurse deployed in such a society for the care of little children certainly has a role to empower parents with health education essentials for the betterment of the welfare of their children. Low child-parent interaction is a significant predisposing factor for children’s health deterioration (Rudd, 2005, p. 71; Janet, 2011, p. 703). Most importantly, the nurse will need to identify possible causes of child-parent low interaction, associated health dangers and the proper and applicable approach from medical practice point of view. He or she is advisable to exploit devices and methods at hand to easily educate the community on individual and collective basis. He or she can do the following; A quick way of measuring the effectiveness of the prevailing health promotion programs and policies is to study the trends of the statistics with respect to child diseases and complications in an area (Schillinger & Bindman, 2004, p. 316). High occurrence of diseases implies inefficiency of the methods applied. A keen and responsible nurse will appraise necessary interventions where possible or report to the relevant authorities for further guidance (Rudd, 2005, p. 81). The first step to health literacy promotion is to identify the reasons for the prevalence of low interaction between the parents and the children (Thompson, 2011, p. 13). The reasons may be identified as follows; Lack of adequate financial base culminates in unbalanced responsibilities of the adults in an attempt to provide for all the needs of a specific household. Adults are more concerned with their daily economic calls than they are concerned with the health care (Scott & Gazmararian, 2002, p. 395). Parents therefore devote limited or no time at all to communicate and stay with their children. Besides, low financial capabilities advance to ignoring the allegedly important issues like balanced diet. When all household responsibilities rest on one person’s shoulders, time for child care is normally altered. Illiteracy is closely associated with ignorance (Davis & Wolf, 2006, p. 847). Ignorant mothers certainly will not care especially on the proper dietary requirements for their children both at home and at school. Most of health related adversities among little children are emotional and dietary (Scott & Gazmararian, 2002, pp. 403/4). Illiteracy levels vary among different societies (Davis & Wolf, 2006, p. 847). Davis and Wolf (2006, p. 847) classify literacy levels as basic literacy, communicative literacy and critical literacy. Basic literacy includes reading and writing skills whereas communicative literacy means more; cognitive skills that enable a person to not only read and write, but also to locate, extract and use relevant information sources with respect to health matters. Critical literacy is of the highest level and depicts more than cognitive skills, enabling a particular person to have a greater control over health related life matters. A qualified nurse certainly identifies different literacy levels in his or her region of operation and specifies what each level will need (Thompson, 2011, p. 9). For example, a person with critical health literacy needs only little guidance as opposed to a person displaying only basic or no literacy (Davis & Wolf, 2006, p. 848). The current scenario presents two categories of clients; adults and children. Children health care is a role of the adults. The adults themselves are single mothers, a phenomenon that makes them prone to incapacity to deliver holistic child care such that they need guidance towards delivering sound parental care (Rudd, 2005, p. 83), particularly as pertains to the very important children health. In general, only adults are eligible clients (Scott & Gazmararian, 2002, p. 400). The single mothers’ delicate family matters require a humanitarian approach (BUMC, 2011, pp. 16/7: Davis & Wolf, 2006, pp. 850/1). The responsible nurse will design proper scenarios in which he or she can effectively educate individual mothers and groups of such mothers. In a contemporary society, and in respect to the scenario of this study, single mothers are likely to communicate to the nurse when their children fall sick or show strange behaviours (Thompson, 2011, p. 10). The nurse will carefully introduce the necessity of close interaction of the mother to the child despite the prevalence of other major family matters to attend to (Thompson, 2011, p. 11). He or she may indicate that most childhood diseases and complications occur due to limited time the parents spend with their children, yet taking care not to display the client as an irresponsible parent. Professional tools include the capacity of the nurse to act psychologically in the shoes of the client so as to capture the client’s attention (Schillinger & Bindman, 2004, pp. 319, 320); giving examples of possible diseases and other complications that accrue from low child-parent interactions from experience; giving some advice on the minimum time required for a parent and her child (taking into account that the child has no complementary parent to assist); offering clear directions on the requirements and application of the currently given therapy (Schillinger & Bindman, 2004, p. 321); keeping records and tracking them when a case is repeatedly presented from a single client (Bryan, 2008, p. 231); providing reading materials; and conducting follow up therapies where possible. Follow up therapy includes communication with the client as an outpatient to indicate the importance of the matter thereof (Cornett, 2009, p. 13) or can involve visiting the parents on household basis via health care outreach programs whenever possible and where social acceptance is readily granted (Scott & Gazmararian, 2002, pp. 401, 403). The kinds of topics of discussion for these mothers are also important. The selection of relevant information will include parental prevention of underperformance of the children and children diseases (Cornett, 2009, p. 12). Nutritional guidance can be done by prescribing the correct mixture of available food for a balanced diet where the main goal is to prevent nutritionally related diseases. Sanitary guidance can be through diagrams on pamphlets indicating procedures that one needs to follow for household chores. The general impression of guidance approaches should imply that the public have a role in preventing various diseases among other domestic health complications (Bryan, 2008, p. 230). Group clients in this context describe a group of single mothers. It is not usual for such groups to literally organize to meet a medical practitioner say at a health care facility (Scott & Gazmararian, 2002, p. 397). Instead, a responsible medical practitioner designs scenarios in which his or her health care messages can reach as many potential clients as possible. However, the effectiveness of the common methods used in this quest is considered hypothetical (Scott & Gazmararian, 2002, pp. 397/8). However, most of these methods are useful not only to reach a large number of clients (Thompson, 2011, pp. 6/7), but also to deliver messages that are difficult to give on individual client basis. A nurse therefore chooses the most effective approach (Bryan, 2008, p. 230). The nurse may organize free seminars for single mothers in the community. During these seminars, he or she can invite another medical advisor (Bryan, 2008, pp. 230/1) on the issues surrounding single parenthood in general, specific single mothers issues in relation to the welfare of their children, particularly on health matters and/or he or she can prepare health tutorials designed specifically to target single mothers and their children’s all round health needs. Alternatively, a nurse may find local women and religious institutions as an enough niche to disseminate his or her intended services to the public. Local religious and groups’ leaders can be used to allocate some of their time to the attention of the matter (Bryan, 2008, p. 233). Another method is to establish public notice programs (Cornett, 2009, p. 18) where the information targets the entire public in general. Notices are put on billboards or any other places easily accessible to many people. However, information contained in these notices contains public health guidance and for this reason may not as effective to a specific group of people (Thompson, 2011, p. 7) as expected. As a matter of fact, single parents’ issues require a more direct approach as described above. In conclusion, many societies ignore matters related to health despite various approaches to promote public health. As a result, public health literacy has been adopted and designed to be effected through incorporation of public education sessions during medical services to the public by the medical attendants deployed at various places (Cornett, 2009, p. 16). Among these attendants are various medical officers and nurses. They are expected to professionally ensure that specific communities they respectively serve are fed sufficiently with proper health awareness and can access medical facilities; find, read, interpret and use available medical information with ease (Scott & Gazmararian, 2002, p. 399); and control and prevent some of health adversities of which their localities are prone to. Child care matters remain a responsibility of the adults (Bryan, 2008, p. 236) because little children cannot make decisions on their own. When such children fall short of a complementary parent, required parental care is bleached. Single parents experience an imbalance of responsibilities calls and little time is often left for attending to their children, making them prone to nutritional and emotional health adversities. Identifying this, a qualified responsible nurse designs the most applicable method (BUMC, 2011, p. 11) to educate single mothers on health issues surrounding their children, a process geared towards ensuring they are, in the end, able to interact closely with their children and prevent potential health complications (Bryan, 2008, pp. 240/1) from attacking their children. References Boston University Medical Campus. (2011). Health Literacy Research: Looking Forward. Journal of Health Communication International, 16(3): 10-17. Bryan, C., (2008). Provider and policy response to reverse the consequences of low health literacy. Journal of Healthcare Management, 53(4), 230-241. Cornett, S., (2009). "Assessing and Addressing Health Literacy". Journal of Nursing, 14(3): 12- 18. Davis, T.C. & Wolf, M.S., (2006). Low Literacy Impacts on Comprehension of Prescription Drug Warning Labels. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 21(8), 847-851. Janet, M.T., (2011) Health Literacy. Journal of American Association, 306(10): 699-705. Nutbeam, D. (2008). The evolving concept of health literacy. Social Science & Medicine, 67, 2072-2078. Rudd, R.E., (2005). Literacy Demands in Health Care Settings: The Patient Perspective. AMA Press, 69-84. Schillinger, D., & Bindman, A., (2004). Health literacy and the quality of physician-patient interpersonal communication. Patient Education and Counselling, 3, 315-323. Scott, T. & Gazmararian, J., (2002). Health literacy and preventive health care use among Medicare enrolees in a managed care organization. Medical Care, 5, 395-404. Thompson, T. L., (2011). Health Communication. Health Communication Journals, 7-2011. 6-13. Read More