DP 6 WELLNESS

So far in this course, we have explored wellness through the lenses of history, the humanities, and the natural and applied sciences. In this module, you will wrap up your draft of Final Project Part One with Milestone Four, and the social sciences lens is the last piece of the puzzle. Look back over the topics you chose to discuss in previous discussions, select one, and reexamine it now through the social sciences lens. In your initial post, address the following:

• Describe or summarize your previous topic.
• How has your understanding been affected by the social sciences lens?
• How does the social sciences lens support the lens you previously used?

TOPIC: 

Early Birth Linked to Greater Risk of Hospital Visits During Childhood

            The journal discusses or links early birth to increased risk of hospital visits during childhood. It observes that findings show that the gestation age during birth is a very strong predictor of poor health in the entire childhood duration. The scientific concern is that when a child is born before the 37 weeks of gestation period, the child has greater risk of being admitted to a hospital than when the child is born at the full term, which is 40 gestation weeks. Even though the research observed that there was a decline in the risk as children grows, basically after two years, there is still increased up to 10 years, even for those kids born between 38 and 39 weeks’ gestation, an indication of more susceptible children.

            One of the main contributors to poor heath in children is preterm birth. Prevailing evidence indicates that vulnerability to illness linked to preterm birth reduces with the growth of a child, yet is not very clear the age at which it starts to occur and the way the changes differ by gestational week of birth. In order to examine the situation, researchers from UK focused on examining the relationship between rates of hospital admission and gestation age at birth to the age of 10 and the way these admission rates keep on altering as the child is growing. The study considered other capable influential factors such as the sex of a child, month of birth, ethnicity, degree of social deprivation and marital status, and the results indicated that childhood hospital admissions were greatly linked to gestational age at birth.

            The study was an observational research, thus it is not possible to define the cause, though there were a number of limitations like several factors capable of impacting the health of a child such as breastfeeding and maternal smoking habits. In order to improve the wellness, the study calls for improved strategies to assist control and manage childhood infections, while further studies must explore the gestational age and consider its outcomes every week.

Journal Reference:

BMJ. (2020, November 25). Early birth linked to greater risk of hospital visits during childhood: Findings indicate that gestational age at birth is a strong predictor of ill health throughout childhood. ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 29, 2020

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/11/201125190739.htm