HEALTH PROMOTION AND THE DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH - Article Example

Realistically, health promotion requires one to focus on issues that affect their health lives and how they can effectively change them to influence a healthy life (Hartford, 2012). For example, if a person is unemployed, change in their location of residence will not take much effect in addressing their immediate problem. Healthy child development is a long term process that starts long before birth, and it determines the health and well-being of the child throughout his or her life. Healthy living of a child through all development stages is fundamental to the child’s thriving and the child is positioned to reach his or her potential adulthood (Hartford, 2012).

Evidently, in the writing, Social determinants of health: The Canadian facts by Mikkonen and Raphael, maltreatment during infancy and early childhood have shown negative child development, affecting the brain and cognitive development. It all affects academic achievement, and these factors have proven to be destructive through jeopardizing the future performance of the child. Repercussions of negative impacts such as child abuse and neglect are manifested into adulthood and adolescence physically, intellectually and psychologically (Mikkonen & Raphael, 2010).

The capacity and deliverance of a child depends substantially on the environment or surrounding where he or she is raised (Hartford, 2012). Extensive research bodies confirm brain development, school readiness, subsequent learning and future adults’ health are substantially influenced by early experience. Health determinants are those factors that shape the health of a child and are characterized by the social and economic factors ranging from the activities they do, including play to how they are treated through their child hood.

Such factor influence the child’s potential of the future and should be addressed with accordingly (Kozier, 2009). Health promotion, on the other hand, deals with the ways how a child will grow in a conducive environment for a better future by taking exert control over determinants of health and here by improving their health (World Health Organization, 2011). Nurses play a fundamental role in health promotion; their role branches out to caring for fit people, as well as the ill (Mikkonen & Raphael, 2010).

Acting as ambassadors of health promotion through preserving of wellness to reduce the number of times a child has to seek health-care services as established by a seminal article of Donaldson and Crowley, nurses’ role in providing information for better living has proven to be one of the key agendas in health promotion; education, as well as availability to the clients, has proven effective. Long-term relation with mothers by working even in their homes has encouraged mothers to take advantage of their strength and achieve their goals (Public Health Agency of Canada, 2010).

Nurses act as advisers to mothers from child birth to parenthood (Hartford, 2012). Their support, through deliverance of healthy babies to becoming confident parents and encouragement to pursue a better future for themselves and their children, has proven most effective. Such roles manifest themselves like: Helping mothers practice preventive health procedures and good parental skills. These include diet improvement and reduction of stimuli and other drugs for instance