Diabetes Community Health Outcomes - Essay Example

"Diabetes Community Health Outcomes" is a wonderful example of a paper on diabetes mellitus.
Resources that can be used to identify outcomes related to diabetes in the community:

Diabetes or chronic high blood sugars is a very prevalent chronic non-communicable disease that is currently a health problem in America. In 2018, it was estimated that over 34.2 million Americans had diabetes with many cases undiagnosed compared to diagnosed cases (Martinez, Sherling, & Holley, 2019). These suggest that Diabetes is currently a community threat that needs adequate measures to combat its prevalence on morbidity and mortality rate.

One of the resources APRNs can use depending on the state of practice is the state Diabetes Report, prepared by the state’s Advisory Council. This report presents statistics on the scope of diabetes in that state as well as public health consequences and financial impact on the community. The report also presents recommendations to address diabetes which include requiring health plans to cover CDC-recognized diabetes prevention programs as a health benefit, increasing awareness about the signs and symptoms of diabetes to promote early prevention and diagnosis, increasing and appropriately allocating funds to the Diabetes Advisory Council (DAC), supporting policy change to reduce the impact of diabetes, increasing access to bariatric surgery for extremely obese patients, and requiring all health care professional to take continuing education courses in diabetes (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017). Furthermore, the report allows APRNs to focus on key areas related to diabetes care and provides public health metrics that can be used to formulate care plans. Furthermore, qualitative research in diabetes care identifies health literacy, self-empowerment, and cost as barriers to diabetes care. Prior to educating patients, APRNs must holistically interview patients to understand their lifestyle, cultural, social, and financial factors so that they can provide individualized diabetes care that can be easily managed by patients. For example, telling a person to eat healthier foods without understanding the types of foods they eat, how they prepare their food and which foods they consider healthy will not be helpful. Lastly, other resources available are biophysical measures such as glycated hemoglobin levels (HbA1c) and frequent-daily glucose levels that can be used to adjust treatment plans. Health awareness measures can be used as tools, clinical evaluation instruments and procedures can be used by Family nurse practitioners. These tools moreover help in determining the gaps that need to be amended in policy change regarding preventive and management measures of diabetes mellitus.

Outcomes related to diabetes mellitus that can interest the community:

A few diabetes outcomes can include improving HbA1c levels, improving diabetes foot care, reducing the number of individuals living with diabetes, reducing the number of new diagnoses, reducing diabetes-related health care spending, improving the quality of life of diabetics patients, reducing the occurrence of microvascular and macrovascular complications related to diabetes, and increasing awareness about the signs and symptoms of diabetes through the use of social media, television, and health magazines (Balakumar, Maung-U, & Jagadeesh, 2016). However, these outcomes are dependent on the levels of preventive and management measures set for diabetes mellitus. If the patients and the community ignore preventive measures like dietary and lifestyle modifications then the outcomes will become poor and vice versa. Also, if the healthcare providers ignore to implementation of the right diagnostic and management policies then they will impact greatly on increase in the prevalence of morbidity and mortality related to diabetic complications.

Outcome comparison:

To compare selected outcomes at the local level with state and national outcomes, APRNs can utilize state and national publications such as the state Diabetes Report at the state level and the CDC’s National Diabetes Report at the national level (Palmas et al., 2015). State and national reports can help APRNs identify health disparities and provide recommendations on how to address diabetes care within their local community.