A communicable disease is a disease that readily affects us and is easy to catch in the course of our day to day life. These diseases include H.I.V. Measles, Tuberculosis, Sexually Transmitted Infections and Nile virus among others. There are a number of factors that catalyze the susceptibility of an individual to being infected by these diseases; they can be widely categorized into, lifestyle, social status and the environment. Due to the human ability to manage these factors, the communicable diseases can thus be controlled.
The control is managed from the grass root level by controlling the factors that bring about these diseases. Control of communicable diseases is a community health nursing endeavor that involves use of innovative and effective nursing interventions. In this paper we are going to use three evidence based journals as guidelines with which to review the endeavor of communicable disease control.
These include the peer reviews of; the American Journal of Public Health, Public Health Nursing Journal and The Family Nurse Partnership Journal. Through reviewing the contents in the three journals, we will establish the current evidence base together with previous interventions and their applications in this topic of study.
According to the peer review on the American journal of public health, evidence proves that there has been a remarkable increase in the life expectancy rates among the developed countries (Brown, & Fee, 2010). This increase is attributed to the great work achieved by the health industries. In order to capture the real essence of this improvement, it is stated in the journal that the life expectancy in the United States and Europe rose to an average of 20 years in the first half of the 20th century.
Though a five tier pyramid, the impact of health care intervention is captured and summarized. In the interpretation of the tier, the forms of interventions found at the bottom of the pyramid produce the greatest results compared to the intervention found at the top of the pyramid. The interventions in a bottom up order include; intervention at the socio-economic level, intervention in public health, the protective intervention, direct clinical care and finally counseling and education (Brown, & Fee, 2010).
The socio- economic intervention advocates for the nurse undertaking the care to reduce poverty and improve education levels. Since poverty renders an individual incapable of accessing proper sanitation. This poses a high health risk for the individual. The nurses will have to promote healthy living standards by urging the individuals to engage in money making activities that will enable them access proper sanitation, this form of intervention usually requires minimal individual effort but its impact is experienced and enjoyed by a greater population.
A public health intervention changes the context of health (Meleis, 2001). It is a form of intervention that works hand in hand with the first intervention since its objective aims at achieving the first form of intervention. Here, the community health workers strive to ensure easy access to infrastructure and other social services necessary in achieving a health friendly environment.
They provide clean water to community members in an effort to reduce infections that arise from use of dirty water like typhoid. They also provide safe roads that allow for easy access to the health facilities in case of an emergency (Meleis, 2001).
A protective intervention is aimed at providing protection against infections before they occur. There are several medical endeavors in providing these forms of interventions and the health care giver often chooses the one that best protects against the disease in question. Accessibility to the intervention is also another factor to be considered before a choice on the protective intervention to be used is made.
Evidence has proven that immunization as a form of intervention prevents up to an estimated 2.5 million deaths in a year. Immunization against measles for example can help in the control of measles in children. Circumcision is a practice that is widely famous in the sub Saharan African continents. As a medical procedure, it is believed to reduce chances of female to male infection of H.I.V. The decrease is estimated to be up to 60% among the population.
Direct clinical care as a form of intervention is considered less effective compared to the two forms of intervention at the bottom of the pyramid. Clinical intervention calls for an individual’s participation since the individual has to seek clinical care. Few people take their health seriously and only a few will visit a clinic even when they are not feeling unwell.
Consideration of these factors renders this form of intervention less effective since its impact is very limited. Individuals may also fail to adhere to clinical visits for different reason like in accessibility to the clinic among others.
Counseling and education are interventions found at the top of the pyramid. In this form of intervention, the health care provider provides counseling and educative sessions to community members. The sessions require trained peer workers to provide advice and education to community members on different behavioral and lifestyle characteristics that pose great risks to their health.
The ineffectiveness of this form of intervention arises from the fact that the success of counseling and education depends upon other factors like socioeconomic status and environment since they provide a context for making healthy choices. It is pointless for example to advice individuals to eat a balanced diet daily when their levels of poverty are so high that they can barely afford a meal a day (Peters, Cristancho, & Garces, 2011).
According to the public health nursing journal, the changes experienced within the 19th and 20th century were as a result of the sanitary movement managing to curb deadly infectious diseases that affected human life (Brown, & Fee, 2010). This led to a growth in the level of life expectancy by 20 percent.
According to this journal, adopting a health model in organizing the intervention process greatly helps in the community health nursing endeavor (Peters, Cristancho, & Garces, 2011). It calls for the addressing of the social and physical determinants of health. The social determinants of health include the family, community and societal structures, these structures are to be organized in a manner that fosters for achievement of a healthy environment.
Physical determinants of health include the environment in terms of industries. Industries have the ability to pollute the environment and pose health risks to individuals.
It also calls for building a healthy community in which all the sectors contribute to fostering health. This can be achieved by providing essential care and education opportunities to community members.
The family and nurse partnership journal advocates for NFP program for the poor in society (Peters, Cristancho, & Garces, 2011). This way the nurses will be able to provide care for the individuals and ensure they live according to medical standards (Meleis, 2001).
Evidence of this is provided in the case of pregnant Tennessee women who were provided with nurse care by Dr. Olds and Colleagues. The positive results of this action were experienced ten years later in both the mothers and children. The mothers portrayed skill in raising healthy children and the children were healthy and abstained from drugs and at the same time possessed high intellectual abilities. The results were due to the nurses’ act of providing guidance to the moms and at the same time promote healthy living (Meleis, 2001).
In relation to communicable disease control, the three journals provide frameworks with which to control communicable diseases. The concepts in the journals provide the concepts that can be achieved by the nurse’s practice as protector of health, promoter of healthy standards of living and as a researcher (Meleis, 2001).
Communicable diseases can be controlled by first of all protecting health. Protection of health is done by both the nurse and the community. The nurse provides counseling together with advice on the activities that best preserve health. In this case, advice on keeping the environment clean and eating healthy foods is a fundamental step in the control of communicable diseases that result from lifestyle and eating. They include typhoid, cholera among others (Peters, Cristancho, & Garces, 2011).
As a promoter of healthy living standards, the nurse provides services that promote the health of members of the community. These include administering immunizations that are meant to prevent common communicable diseases. For example, an immunization against measles is the health protector’s endeavor in protecting the future health of the child. Here, the nurse intervenes at the child’s developmental level in an effort to preserve future health.
The nurse as a researcher engages in survey of the causes of common communicable diseases and tries to provide solutions to these problems in an effort to curb the diseases from grassroots. The nurses for example will establish how factors like poverty, dirty environment and lifestyle lead to communicable diseases.
Then in an effort to control these, the nurse will use the acquired knowledge to educate the community on the necessary steps to take in order to prevent and control communicable disease. The nurses can also intervene by providing amenities like clean water to help curb water caused communicable diseases (Peters, Cristancho, & Garces, 2011).
It is a necessary endeavor for the community to understand the nature of communicable diseases and how these diseases can be controlled. This understanding will provide an avenue through which the community can participate in providing nursing care for its members. At the same time, the health fraternity can use the gathered information to provide long term solutions in the control of communicable diseases.
From the gathered evidence, there is hope in winning the fight against communicable diseases and therefore a higher life expectancy will be achieved in the coming years. This will be achieved since in the control of communicable diseases, the same methods that saw to the eradication of life threatening infections are being employed.
Different stake holders participate in achieving the control over communicable diseases. They include; environmental health officers, public health physicians, the World Health Organization, AMREF and UNICEF. They all aim at providing a sustainable environment that fosters achievement of good health through setting health standards to be maintained in an effort to achieve full control over communicable diseases.
References
Brown, T., & Fee, E. (2010). Birth of the American Journal of Public Health. American journal of public health, 100(1), 66 – 67.
Meleis, A. (2001). Scholarship and the R01. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 33(2), 104.
Peters, K., Cristancho, S., & Garces, M. (2011). Family and community health issues, near and far. Family & community health, 34(4), 278.