Healthy Eating in Stages of Life
How might you apply the concept of making healthy choices to support healthier behaviours among your clients?
Healthy living is one way of avoiding common illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension, skin diseases, obesity, anorexia, bulimia, among other illnesses. Community health is essential in ensuring that members of a community have knowledge of and access to healthinformation. Thehealth of the community determines the wellbeing and prosperity of the community. To enhance community health, there are various ways in which the concepts of making healthy choices can be applied. One of the most effective ways of promoting community health is through education. Community nurses and health workers are responsible for educating community members on health matters. For instance, nurses, as the caregivers are at a better position to speak to patients about healthy living. Nurses can educate and inform patients on matters such as nutrition, exercise and fitness, eating habits and disorders, addiction, among other issues that may affect the patient’s health.
Another way of promoting healthy choices in the community is through the provision of affordable services in areas such as nutritional health, mental health and drug and substance abuse. Providing communities with access to these services can help to improve their health choices. For example, providing affordable nutritional services in the community will help in reducing cases such as obesity and eating disorders. Nurses can provide the community with nutrition information on how they can use locally available foods and supplements to boost their health. The nutritional health services will help families in ensuring that children consume healthy and nutritious foods needed for their growth and development. Providing communities with mental health services will improve the community’s health. Mental health is oftenstigmatized, leading to hopelessness and suicides. Making mental health a priority is vital in community health. Drug and alcohol rehabilitation centres are also a way of promoting healthy choices. By de-stigmatizing drug rehabilitation, communities will see an improvement in health as more people will have access to treatment.
Community health can be improved by lobbying for better health and nutrition policies. Health advocates can help to promote healthy living by speaking up for policy efforts that make it easier for members of a community to access affordable nutrition. Cases such as obesity are on the rise among poor communities in America due to lack of proper nutrition. The high dependence on cheap fast foods makes it difficult for needy communities to fight obesity. Organic foods and fresh foods are expensive, therefore inaccessible to these communities. Lobbying for subsidies will allow the affected communities to access healthy foods, therefore, reducing lifestyle diseases in these communities.
How can community empowerment and engagement affect health behaviour change?
One of the fastest ways of improving and changing community healthbehaviours is through community engagement and empowerment. Community engagement and empowermentinvolves including the community members in making health and nutrition decisions. These engagements can be done through local health workshops, engaging the community through fun activities such as games and tournaments. These avenues can be used to educate the community on health matters. According to O’Mara-Eves et al. (2015), community health engagements are an effective way of changing healthbehaviours, self-efficacy,and health consequences as well as improve health social support. Engaging the community on health matters has a positive impact on the community’s eventual health outcomes.
Community empowerment and engagement impacts positively on social inequalities and health inequalities. By nagging the community, health workers can understand the issues affecting the community that can be detrimental to their heath. For instance, through community engagements in health workshops, the health workers can be able to understand the community’s economic activities and sources on income. This information can shed light on the community’s purchasing power and what they can afford to eat.
(O’Mara-Eves et al., 2015). Health workers can use this information to change the community’s diet by suggesting affordable alternatives from locally available food items. This initiative will help to reduce the health inequalities between communities.
Community engagement and empowerment helps in changing community health choices by providing communities with nutritional information and other health information. Through community empowerment programs, young people can be taught how to be self-sufficient in small scale food farming in kitchen gardens and small farms. Community members are taught how to plant vegetables and other foods that can be a source of nutrients to their families. This will reduce the dependence on fast foods. Community engagements also provide the community with knowledge of the different types of foods and their nutritional value (Tengland, 2016). With this knowledge, people can make conscious choices about their diets.
Community engagement and empowerment helps in reducing the numbers of people falling into drug and alcohol abuse. Through community empowerment projects, young people can attend schools and colleges where they learn skills that empower them to access proper nutrition and keep them away from habits such as drug use and excessive alcohol consumption. By keeping young people busy and productive, the community can improve its healthstatus.Suntayakorn & Rojjanasrirat, (2013), through research, determined that community empowerment programs helped to reduce the risk of stroke by changing the community’s health behaviours. Community engagement also helps to encourage people to seek medical help when faced with healthchallenges that may arise out of the poor diet. By engaging the community, health workers will be able to understand the best way to communicate health matters to the people, therefore, encouraging them to change.
Who would you enlist as partners in planning and implementing programs to achieve desired health outcomes at a community level? Why did you choose these partners?
When planning and implementing community health programs, it is vital to ensure that some notable members of the community are involved. The first people to involve in the program would be the community health workers. Community health workers work hand in hand with the people as well as with health facilities to preserve community health (Dudley, Cotton &Peralta, 2015). Community workers can engage the people through community activities as well as door to door health drives meant to teach and inform the people on healthy living. These are the people who know the community well in terms of community traditions, economic activities, social norms, as well as other factors that may affect the health of the people. Health workers are often friendly and familiar to the community, making it easy for the health workers to engage the people.
Secondly, community leaders can play a vital role in changing the community’shealthbehaviours and improve community health. Community elders comprise of local religious leaders, local government officers, some respected members of the community such as health professionals that are members of the community and any other person of influence in the society (Dudley, Cotton & Peralta, 2015). These people are respected in the community, meaning they would be at a better position to introduce and foster change in the community. Pastors can talk to congregants about the importance of eating healthy foods and keeping fit and encourage the church members to live healthy lifestyles. The same goes for the other respected members of the community.
School teachers and school heads also play an essential role in shaping the community. Schools can help in providing students with nutritious foods through the school lunch programs. Providing students with a balanced meal helps to keep them healthy. The school can also educate students on healthy eating and encourage these students to introduce these healthy practices at home (Dudley, Cotton & Peralta, 2015). The schools can also reach out to parents during parent-teacher meetings and school events to promote community health.
References
Dudley, D., Cotton, W., & Peralta, L. (2015, June). Teaching approaches and strategies that promote healthy eating in primary school students: a systematic review and meta-analysis. In ISBNPA-Advancing Behavior Change Science.
O’Mara-Eves, A., Brunton, G., Oliver, S., Kavanagh, J., Jamal, F., & Thomas, J. (2015). The effectiveness of community engagement in public health interventions for disadvantaged groups: a meta-analysis. BMC public health, 15, 129. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-015-1352-y
Suntayakorn, C., & Rojjanasrirat, W. (2013). Effects of an empowerment program on health behaviours and stroke risk reduction of at-risk group in Thai rural community. Journal of the Medical Association of Thailand = Chotmaihet thangphaet, 96(9), 1229–1238.
Tengland, P. A. (2016). Behaviour change or empowerment: On the ethics of health promotion goals. Health Care Analysis, 24(1), 24-46.