Community Participatory Health Promotion and Prevention

Student’s Name

Institutional Affiliation

Date

Community Participatory Health Promotion and Prevention

The author’s assumption prior to initiating this study was that public health nursing was as a result of development of distinct nursing specialty to squalid urban living conditions that prompted population-oriented, preventive health care. The author assumed that public health nurses had vital roles in improving social and health conditions of vulnerable groups. Their leaders at that time viewed themselves as advocates for public health nurses. Another assumption is that vulnerable, high risk populations were the focus of this care and included teen mothers, sedentary individuals, smokers, homeless individuals, frail elderly and those in risk of a specific disease. From early days, curative measures have always been carried out leaving out prevention measures. 

There exists a continued struggle of public health nurses with appropriate actions that are to achieve quick results as it leaves a long lasting improvement to the vulnerable population. This tension was guided by the Christian principle of helping only those who help themselves but it was short lived. It has been assumed that giving prevention and promotional care is a changing strategy but knowledge needs to be impacted together with community empowerment. Giving out knowledge was thought to be enough but changing the attitude is what brings change. 

Reason for Using Participatory Approach Research

In community Development, participatory research is the process of combining research, education and collective action to the oppressed group (Lev, 2006). The research problem was involvement of youths in substance abuse and its prevention in a rural county. This required a diverse research approach to help in changing the attitude of the youths and the best approach was participatory action research. This is because it combines five different fields: participatory research in community development; action research in organizations; farmer participatory research and technology generation; action research in schools and participatory evaluation. These fields are flexible according to this population .This combination of these different fields made it to be the best approach to use in this patient population.

Lev (2006), explains that participatory approach always incorporates dimensions that are not used in other approaches. This approach was also best as the views of the poor people are elicited in shaping plans and contributes to developmental strategies. This approach is one of the cost effective and sustainable approaches to use in prevention and promotional strategies. It will also allow timely interventions and analysis. The approach helped in allowing socio-cultural systems and contexts. Shannon (2013) suggests that using participatory practices while working with diverse community assists public health nurses in improving their cultural competences. 

The community participation and ethnographic model is embedded with local knowledge which is a resultant of differing ethnicity and race, with divergent values, attitudes and beliefs of community members (Kulbok, Thatcher, Park, & Meszaros, 2012). 

Benefits of the Study

One of the unique benefits of this study is that Community Participatory Health Promotion Model encourages community members’ engagement and its trusted leaders from problem identification processes to project evaluation and dissemination. The model also helped in formation of a balance between researchers or practitioners and community members through co-learning, co-teaching and shared leadership opportunities. This is a shared benefit of both community members and researchers or health professional. 

The study will help public health nurses in gaining skills through collaborative partnership with stakeholders and community leaders. The CBPR approach will also help in identifying solutions to problems as well as available resources. This study will enhance these skills by empowering the members of a community to address their issues at community level. This will be achieved by increasing individual and community efficacy for health promotion in the CBPR process. The study will help public health nurses to develop skills when they engage community members and during community capacity building while designing more sustainable and effective health promotion programs. 

This study exposes the PHNs to different frameworks while engaging the community. These frameworks will open their minds to diversity of culture, race and other factor. This will assist them in working with different groups of people and individuals from different backgrounds. This study exposes PHNs to different participatory practices that help them in acquiring important skills. The PHN acquires cultural competence while using the different practices in this model as well as analytical assessment skills. Another perceived benefit of PAR is it results to both immediate action and generation of knowledge, addressing the real contextual needs, giving stakeholders’ permission to direct the research process, promoting collaboration and team work. 

Challenges of the Study

This approach is subjective in nature making the impact of views of the study to be remote. Another challenge of using the approach in this study is wastage of time. The study consists of different practices in one approach that makes it to consume a lot of time to obtain information as well as impacting knowledge to the community. This approach involves projects that are raised at community level and if inadequate information is given, there may be no attitude change. It is also disadvantageous as money and time would be lost in creation of an elephant project.

Application of Study in Professional Care

The principles of this study can be utilized in my profession care. The knowledge on cultural competency, community assessment strategies, program planning skills and others can be utilized in day to day work of a PHN. PHN is more on prevention measures and not just curative measures and the strategies used in this study would help in laying prevention measures both at individual and community level. Another principle it uses is collaboration and team work with community and stakeholders. This interaction is useful in day to day work to increase the outcome of health promotion techniques. Principles used are useful as they illustrates that every person is responsible towards their health and community is at level one of treatment.

Conclusion

The study has revealed that participatory action research contains the potential to actively engage, empower and involve all stakeholders in significant innovations of the trainings of health professions. When individuals actively contribute and participate in such innovations, they are highly likely to actively accept and implement them as they were originally required. Community empowerment and capacity building should involve all stakeholders and the community members to assist the community to make their own decision of health issues.

References

Kulbok,, P., Thatcher, E., Park, E., & Meszaros, P. (2012). Evolving Public Health Nursing Roles: Focus on Community Participatory Health Promotion and Prevention. The Online Journal Of Issues In Nursing, (1091-3734 | 1-800-274-4ANA). Retrieved from http://nursingworld.org

Lev, L. (2006). Participatory action research. Agricultural Systems, 41(4), 525-526. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0308-521x(93)90049-8

Shannon, C. (2013). Community-Based Health and Schools of Nursing: Supporting Health Promotion and Research. Public Health Nursing, 31(1), 69-78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/phn.12061