Working in a community health department
Assume that you are working in a community health department. The department has some federal money that it wants to allocate to two health promotion programs from the following:
- Decrease in deaths from cardiovascular disease
- Decrease in deaths from breast cancer
- Decrease in teenage pregnancy
- Decrease in cigarette smoking
- Decrease in incidence of diabetes
- Decrease in motor vehicle accidents
- Decrease in osteoporosis and hip fractures among women
- Decrease in obesity
Address the following questions:
- Identify the risk factors associated with the selected health promotion programs.
- What is the target population associated with the selected health promotion program? Consider the hypothetical target population, consisting of middle-aged women, male adolescent gang members, premature infants, etc., and describe the characteristics of each program.
- What are the risk factors that you want to focus on in order to achieve the objective of the health promotion program?
- What intervention would you recommend to be most appropriate to reduce exposure to these risk factors? You can choose at what level of intervention you want to implement each program (primary, secondary, tertiary health intervention).
- What will be the process by which this intervention will achieve the goal of the program?
- What will be the anticipated outcome of this intervention?
Use the Internet, research and read about various approaches to interventions and various settings in which these interventions can occur. You can also visit your local or state health department’s websites or look for journal articles that address the approaches to interventions. Based on your research, express your views on the following:
- Identify and describe a health issue or disease and recommend an intervention. You may utilize the health issue from week one or choose another issue. In your description, include social determinants or causes and data that demonstrates why this is a health issue.
- Is the intervention level (primary, secondary, and tertiary) and settings chosen justified? Why or why not?
- What are the issues surrounding implementation of the intervention and its potential success?
- What are the roles of government (Federal, State, and Local) and nongovernmental agencies in the development of the recommended prevention and/or intervention program?
