DQ Reply 2 635

Health Promotion in Asian Americans

One of the indicators that define healthy people is addressing the social determinants of health and creating social and physical environments that promote good health. An example of social determinants is language and literacy. Individuals, especially with language barriers, with chronic diseases, lack to attain, process, and apply information to be able to appropriately and competently make their own health decisions (Chen & Hu, 2015). Additionally, many Chinese Americans prefer to go to clinics where their providers can speak their preferred language to effectively communicate with their provider as those with limited English proficiency result in noncompliance to treatments resulting in poor health status. In 2006, about 75% of Asian American adults were less likely to have visited a doctor or other health professional (Brennan Ramirez, Baker, & Meltzer, 2008).

The Asian Pacific Community in Action meets the health-related needs of Asian American individuals with low-income and limited English proficient by providing a network of services including cancer prevention, screening, and vaccination clinics, that are not just affordable, but also with language access. As a future NP, it is important to be culturally competent and engage in advocacy for access to healthcare for diverse communities, and identifying a local community resource helps us provide and promote health to our patients. To reduce health disparities, low health literacy is needed where health information should be communicated in a way that anyone can understand. For instance, simplifying communication, confirming comprehension, providing interpreters when needed, and supporting the patient’s efforts to improve their health (Chen & Hue, 2015).

References

Brennan Ramirez, L. K., Baker, E. A., & Meltzer, M. (2008). Promoting health equity: A resource to help communities address social determinants of health. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dch/programs/healthycommunitiesprogram/tools/pdf/SDOH-workbook.pdf

Chen, M.-L., & Hu, J. (2015). Health disparities in Chinese Americans with hypertension: A review. International Journal of Nursing Sciences, 1(3), 318-322. doi:10.1016/j.ijnss.2014.07.002

Healthy people 2020 has a goal of promoting access to healthcare in all communities (Access to Health Services, n.d.). This provides a goal for healthcare providers to increase all population's access to healthcare regardelss of the obstacles or issues that may present itself (Access to Health Services, n.d.).

In my essay, I chose the Hispanic population. In the Hispanic population, there is a lack of access to healthcare due to lack of insurance which is a result of the cultural bias of preferring internal religious treatment from healers rather than external healthcare treatments (Yanez et al., 2016). Another restriction is that Hispanic culture is usually patriarchial, and the leader of the close-knit family usually chooses to look inwards to healers and religious ceremonies as illness is viewed as punishment from God for recent immoral acts (Yanez et al., 2016). These biases combine to create a uniqe issue with a unique solution to promote healthcare access to the Hispanic population. 

The unique solution is to come up with health programs and health promotion community resources that target the patriarchial leadership of the Hispanic community (O'Connor et al., 2020). The program that was created is called Healthy Dads, Healthy Kids, which targets Hispanic men who are the leaders of their family, and provides them with information that explains health promotion and access to healthcare (O'Connor et al., 2020). In the course of the program, father-child bonding increased, and requested information regarding health promotion also was found to increase as well (O'Connor et al., 2020). The program's primary goal of obtaining acceptance, relevance, and impact of the Hispanic community was ultimately obtained as these families began to adapt a healthy lifestyle and began to seek out healthcare from healthcare specialists regarding current disease proceeses and health promotion and prevention (O'Connor et al., 2020).

In my community, we can adapt this same approach, and as an Acute Care Nurse Practitioner, it would be my responsibility to meet with the families and help explain the goals of the program regarding health promotion and direct it towards the male leadership in hope of getting the same response. I think it will be easier to implement the program if there was a provider that led the discussions along with the assistance of bilingual interpeters in order to adequately convey information back and forth. 

 

References:

Access to Health Services. (n.d.). Retrieved September 03, 2020, from  https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topics-objectives/topic/Access-to-Health-Services

O’Connor, T. M., Perez, O., Beltran, A., Colón García, I., Arredondo, E., Parra Cardona, R., Cabrera, N., Thompson, D., Baranowski, T., & Morgan, P. J. (2020). Cultural adaptation of “Healthy Dads, Healthy Kids” for Hispanic families: applying the ecological validity model. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition & Physical Activity, 17(1), 1–18.  https://doi-org.lopes.idm.oclc.org/10.1186/s12966-020-00949-0

Yanez, B., McGinty, H. L., Buitrago, D., Ramirez, A. G., & Penedo, F. J. (2016). Cancer Outcomes in Hispanics/Latinos in the United States: An integrative review and conceptual model of determinants of health. Journal of Latina/o Psychology, 4(2), 114–129. https://doi-org.lopes.idm.oclc.org/10.1037/lat0000055