Running head: HEALTH PROMOTION AND DISEASE PREVENTION 1
Health Promotion and Disease Prevention
Name
Institution
Health Promotion and Disease Prevention
Part I: Wellness and Disease Prevention Brochure among American Latinos
Why Your Health is Our Concern
People of Latino origin make up 15% of America’s population and the percentage is rising. There is need to provide the best health care with quality outcomes to this population.
Facts to Keep in Mind:
Latino’s are at a greater risk of lifestyle diseases like diabetes and hypertension than the average American (Juckett, 2013) .
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Understanding one’s health risks greatly improves the chances for early diseases diagnosis and treatment.
Latino’s are adversely affected by cultural differences in the American health care system.
Latino’s also suffer from higher cases of obesity.
Barriers to Effective Health Care:
Language barriers.
Cultural beliefs.
Cost of health care.
Overcoming the Barriers
Seeking medical health as soon as signs of ill health appear.
Collaboration with health practitioners.
Healthy eating and regular exercise.
Regular medical checkup.
Acknowledging existent language differences.
Steps to Receiving Quality Health Care
Reporting cases of ill health to medical practitioners on time.
Honesty about cultural beliefs and practices.
Reporting health care concerns.
Sticking to the directives of health practitioners.
Discuss health progress with physician.
Support for the Health Program
Facility-based professional health counselling.
Cost-effective health care.
Cultural assessment.
Exercise regime and diet for life style disease patients.
Effective monitoring of progress.
Part II
Selection of Brochures
Patient education has proved effective in the way health care is approached. Education helps patient outcomes through influence on attitudes and beliefs and change of patient behavior (Elsevier Clinical Solutions, 2015). Additionally, patient education proves useful in the prevention of diseases and minimizing of health care costs early diagnosis and diseases management. Consequently, patient education brochures are extensively used in health care to educate patients from diverse populations on the importance of health monitoring, disease prevention and management and the effects of cultural practices and beliefs on quality of health care. Latino’s make up a significant percentage of America’s population thus education significantly affects the way health care is delivered to patients belonging to this the population. Application of brochures as patient education materials is informed by the benefits accrued by the use of these materials.
Brochures are a relatively cheap method of passing information to patients. Print media is less costly than other methods of educations. Thus, brochures can be used to reach a large population of the targeted audience with the minimum resources available. Furthermore, brochures utilize minimal spaces to pass much information related to the topic as possible. In this case, a brochure passes large amount information to the target audience in few words. Brochures are also picturesque and flashy, thus hard to ignore. Consequently, information on brochures can hardly be ignored.
The appropriateness of brochures for the education of Latino populations lies in their socioeconomic status, education level and effectiveness of the method (Juckett, 2013). Latinos in the US earn on average a lower income than their white counterparts. This implies that they are likely to be adversely affected by medical costs. As a result, knowledge of how cultural and religious beliefs affects health outcomes is crucial in health diagnosis and disease management to prevent accumulation of hospital bills. Additionally, most Latinos achieve an average of high school education, making them identify more with print media than other means of passing information.
Health promotion is often faced with challenges that might jeopardize how the strategies work in ensuring the improvement of patient outcomes. Complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) might affect the way patients respond to clinical therapies. Traditional healing practices like curanderismo are common among nations (Juckett, 2013). They also apply home remedies for certain kinds of illnesses. Although home remedies may be useful in certain kinds of minor ailments like colds, they may adversely affect the quality of health care offered due to late reporting of cases. Thus, patients’ conditions may be at advanced stages in some cases. Herbal therapies may also negatively affect the performance of western medicines when the two are used in combination. Thus health promotions strive to discourage such practices.
Language barriers are also a hindrance to the effectiveness of health promotion strategies. The message in brochures or other educational materials may be missed or misinterpreted owing to language differences. Thus, the primary purpose of the message is missed. Religious beliefs also affect effectiveness of health promotion strategies. For example, Latinos believe in deities who are the controllers of life and death. Such beliefs have the effect of clouding judgments on how diseases need to be managed. Another barrier to health promotion and disease prevention among Latino Americans is societal beliefs on some illnesses. Some forms of stress may be attributed to soul loss as opposed to being treated as mental conditions. Thus, information on health can be regarded as baseless.
Overcoming the Barriers
Impediments to health promotions and disease prevention are overcome efficiently using strategic methods of education like brochures. Language barriers are especially undesirable in an attempt to reach as many ions in the people as possible with the information on health education. Brochures efficiently overcome this obstacle by using simple language and illustrations. Brochures can also be easily translated to Spanish which is the most common language among Latinos. CAMs are also a significant challenge in health promotion and disease prevention. Since brochures have the ability relay a lot of information in few words, the dangers of using some forms of alternative medicines can be printed together with the consequences. Only positive CAM are encouraged.
Religious beliefs that emphasize spiritual healing as opposed to scientific methods are also proved wrong using evidence in brochures. Through illustrations, the audience can be convinced on the superiority of healing methods based on science over spiritual approaches. Societal beliefs like increased body weight signifying improved health are also demystified through the information contained in brochures. Thus, brochures can prove effective in overcoming the challenges in health promotion and disease prevention.
Impact on Health Outcomes
Health education has proven effective in workplaces, schools and health facilities (Zabaleta-del-Olmo et al., 2015). Communities respond better to measures to prevent diseases when health education is done than without health education. Health education also helps in preventing disease outbreaks since local are made aware of the risk factors for the diseases. At the national level, health education strategies improve the overall health care standing of the country. Globally, health promotion and wellness I encouraged by relevant bodies like the WHO to improve wellness in global populations. Locally, exercise among working populations has been encouraged to improve performance on at work and also reduce days off due to illness. At the national level, governments invest resources in health education to prevent lifestyle diseases like diabetes and hypertension. Such promotions encourage people to engage in lifestyle activities that do not expose them to these diseases. The WHO is also involved in education programs that promote wellness.
In conclusion, brochures are an effective method of health promotion and disease prevention. They have the benefits of being cost-effective while at the same time reaching large groups of people. They have also proved to be effective in overcoming the cultural barriers that prevent health promotion. Health education is applied at local, national and international levels to encourage wellness.
References
Elsevier Clinical Solutions. (2015). How to develop and use effective patient/consumer education. Retrieved on 12 March 2018, from https://www.elsevier.com/__.../Elsevier_WP_PatientEducationWhitepaper5_29_15W.
Juckett, G. (2013). Caring for Latino patients. Am erican Family Physician, 87(1) , 48-54.
Zabaleta-del-Olmo, E., Bolibar, B., García-Ortíz, L., García-Campayo, J., Llobera, J., Bellón, J. Á., & Ramos, R. (2015). Building interventions in primary health care for long-term effectiveness in health promotion and disease prevention. A focus on complex and multi-risk interventions. Preventive medicine, 76 .
