Community empowerment alludes to the process of enabling a particular community to have more control over their lives. In terms of healthcare, the empowerment process addresses the cultural, social, economic, as well as political determinates which underpin health and seeks partnership with other sectors in the formulation of strategies and solutions. Community participation or involvement, on the contrariwise, entails the active involvement of citizens in every aspect of the strategic development as well as the implementation of plans of programs and projects. The two differ in that community participation is a representation of an action or being part of the action like the implementation and strategizing process, while empowerment is about sharing power and control and the capacity to participate and influence decisions on resource allocations. Thus, empowering can be considered as both self-initiated as well as initiated by others, while participation represents more of the latter.
There are several means that nurses can use to empower their communities, especially regarding health programs. For instance, nurses can organize for locality development. This usually emphasizes community building by improving the systems in the locality. For instance, in programs to improve public health, nurses can advocate for screening centers or local clinics so that early diagnoses and treatments can be undertaken within the community, thus enabling easy management of diseases. Similarly, nurses can educate members of the community by undertaking mass education campaigns as well as educating leaders via conferences and seminars so that they can enable them to lead their communities and understand the importance of a particular health program (The Nurse’s Role in Community Health, 2017).
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Examples of community empowerment include empowerment for health, especially for women in Samoa (Laverack et al., 2009). This was a national program that was designed to address the women’s health needs in Samoa, Polynesia, and this led to the creation of a community-based self-help network that was based on support from the neighborhood as well as nursing care which operated via existing Women’s Health Committees.
References
Laverack, G., Munodawafa, D., Aggrawal, S., Chatterjee, M., Thakur, J., and Srivastava, R. (2009). Community Empowerment with Case Studies from the South-East Asia Region . Retrieved 30 October 2020, from https://www.dors.it/documentazione/testo/201409/03_2009_OMS%20Nairobi_Community%20Empowerment.pdf
The Nurse’s Role in Community Health . (2017) . Retrieved 30 October 2020, from https://nursingonline.nsuok.edu/articles/rnbsn/nurses-role-in-community-health.aspx#:~:text=Additionally%2C%20community%20health%20nurses%20offer,dispense%20medications%20and%20administer%20immunizations.
