Introduction
It is important to check people for diseases and conditions like hypertension, stroke, and cancer, even if they do not currently show any symptoms. Before an illness or condition worsens significantly, health screening, education, and resources can prevent or detect it early, improving patient outcomes. Guidelines for various screenings and recommendations are provided by the United States Preventive Services Task Force (Krist et al., 2021). Screening for hypertension in adults is one sort of screening that gets an A recommendation from the USPSTF, which will be discussed in greater depth below.
Conceptual Model
The Health Belief Model, a model with constructs for guidance, guides this intervention. The Health Belief Model (HBM) is an analytical framework for directing health education and illness prevention initiatives. It is a tool for explaining and forecasting how people’s health-related habits will shift over time. In the field of health behavior research, it is a go-to framework.
According to Krist et al. (2021), the Health Belief Model (HBM) explains and predicts individual health behaviors for preventing and controlling hypertension and their complications. The perception of susceptibility, seriousness, severity, advantages, and disadvantages of adopting a healthy behavior and cues to action are all HBM elements in the hypertension screening endeavor. Patient-perceived severity, benefits, obstacles, and self-efficacy are all determining components of the Health Belief Model (HBM) (Krist, 2021). According to Keshani et al. (2019), the Health Belief Model’s features can help nurses choose effective instructional tactics for promoting healthy behaviors. The patient’s knowledge, values, beliefs, and attitudes influence motivation and behavior change.
Screening Purpose
Hypertension was seen often in 2015 in primary care settings. Heart failure, myocardial infarction, stroke, and chronic renal disease all include hypertension as a critical risk factor. According to Krist (2021), people above 18 should be screened, preferably in a non-clinical setting, per the recommendations. Adults at 40 and over, especially those at a higher risk for hypertension, should have their blood pressure checked once a year.
Location
The hypertension screening event will occur on Wednesday, May 4, from 4-7 p.m., at Washoe County Health District, 1001 East N1001 East Ninth Street, Building B, City. This is an open, fair community fair in a convenient downtown Reno, Nevada, location, at a casino with a vast parking lot and easy access to major highways. According to the most recent community health needs assessment report from the Washoe County Health District (Krist et al., 2021). This area is also convenient for reaching the top five zip codes with the greatest need.
Population
Northern Nevada Washoe County’s adult population will be studied in detail. With a reported 21.3% of the people in Washoe County being under 18, the US Census Bureau estimates that 78.7% of the residents are 18 years or older (Billingham-Hemminger & Locke, 2021). In addition, at 84.6%, Whites were the most commonly reported race, followed by those of Hispanic or Latino ethnicity at 25% (Darvishpour et al., 2022).
A notation indicates that the estimates come from several data sources, but it should be emphasized that they do not sum up to 100%. The top 5 CNI zip codes in 2015 also had significantly higher rates of hypertension-related hospitalizations than the rest of Washoe County (Keshani et al., 2019). More than three times as many hospitalizations for hypertension-related reasons occurred in 89502 in 2016 (1,292.6 per 10,000 persons), compared to 409.6 per 10,000 in Washoe County.
Screening Activity
Nurses and medical assistants will take blood pressure during a community fair as part of a screening for hypertension. The registered nurses will evaluate the patient’s outlook and knowledge about hypertension. If the patient lacks a primary care physician or cannot afford the care they need, the nurse will assist them with information and referrals (Krist et al., 2021).
Patients at risk for hypertension and stroke will be evaluated after a brief health and educational assessment. The treatment of hypertension must take a multifaceted approach because it is a complex clinical problem. Health centers are guided by the Value Transformation Framework (VTF) of NACHC when combining interventions for HTN with system-level interventions that enable success. Team-based care, patient engagement, and collaborations are examples of system-level interventions. The Quintuple Aim is being pursued through these gains in health outcomes, patient and worker experience, cost containment, and equity.
A screening test’s value comes from its capacity to identify possible issues while reducing unclear, ambiguous, or perplexing results. Even though screening tests are not always 100% accurate, it is generally better to have them when your healthcare professional advises rather than foregoing them altogether. However, some screening tests can do more harm than good when administered to individuals who are not at high risk for disease or when testing for sporadic disorders.
Outcome Goals
Three essential outcomes determine the outcome of the screening of the hypertension initiative. The first outcome is to increase the rate of adult preventive care. In this outcome, diseases and premature death can be avoided if people have access to hypertension screening. People are more likely to use preventative care services if they access strategies like team-based treatment and decreased copays.
Secondly, the initiative focuses on reducing the proportion of adults suffering from high blood pressure. Hypertension increases a person’s risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke, heart failure, and renal disease (Krist et al., 2021).
Budget/Cost
Cost overruns due to venue fees, travel expenses, and logistics planning have been factored into the budget, as shown in Table 1 below.
Table 1: Budget/Cost
Summary
Although patients who adhere to self-care measures that improve their health tend to have better results, doing so can be challenging. Despite the benefits of evidence-based hypertension self-care activities in reducing blood pressure, hypertensive patients often display low compliance with the proposed self-care behaviors. Since early detection and education can help people better control their hypertension and minimize the risk of stroke by encouraging them to start engaging in healthful self-care activities immediately, it is crucial to continue conducting these screenings.
References
Billingham-Hemminger, D. M., & Locke, J. D. (2021). The benefits of a more physically active workforce in the corporate world.
Darvishpour, A., Mansour-Ghanaei, R., & Mansouri, F. (2022). The relationship between health literacy, self-efficacy, and self-care behaviors in older adults with hypertension in the North of Iran. HLRP: Health Literacy Research and Practice, 6(4), e262-e269.
Krist, A. H., Davidson, K. W., Mangione, C. M., Cabana, M., Caughey, A. B., Davis, E. M., & US Preventive Services Task Force. (2021). Screening for hypertension in adults: US Preventive Services Task Force reaffirmation recommendation statement. Jama, 325(16), 1650-1656.
Keshani, P., Hossein Kaveh, M., Faghih, S., & Salehi, M. (2019). Improving diet quality among adolescents, using health belief model in a collaborative learning context: A randomized field trial study. Health education research, 34(3), 279-288.