Introduction
Community health is a public health section that focuses on societal wellbeing, including economic and social interaction. It is an essential public health subsection that ensures health maintenance and improvement among the community members while preventing infectious illness spread and disaster management preparation. Additionally, it impacts crucial aspects of the community, including children’s learning ability, working capability, life expectancy, financial status, criminal tendencies, happiness, safety, and educational achievements. This paper focuses on a description of Hunts Point community in New York, major health problems, contributing factors to child maternal health, and human service agencies in the community, nursing practice, and community health’s importance in successful childbearing.
The Hunts Point community in New York
The Hunts Point neighbors the Longwood in South Bronx. It lies in the Melrose’s and Morrisania’s East. Its location encompasses facilities that generate food production globally. The Hunts Point avenues are the primary street in operation encompassing boundaries, including Bruckner expressway and Bronx River. The 2018 demographic report depicted Hunts Point as having around 164000 members, with the lowest percentage being Asians and Hispanics on the leading population (Bronx community district, 2018). The community population also included blacks and whites. The education level in Hunts Point is slightly lower than that of the neighboring Bronx and the city in general. Also, the community’s poverty level is higher than the national percentage, implicating the need for economy-boosting.
The Hunts Point sociocultural composition includes language diversity encompassing African languages, English, Spanish, and French due to ethnicity and ancestry differences. Cultural proceeding in the community emanates from the members’ shared behavior. The different ancestry roots include Puerto Rican, Dominican, African, Sub-Saharan Africa, Mexican, and foreign country descents. Individuals in the Hunts Point neighborhood work in various occupational settings such as manufacturing, service, and sales jobs in restaurants and executive and management positions (Bronx community district, 2018). The different occupations shape the cultural and social interaction of the community members. Most individuals access workplaces by train, which is cost-effective and guarantees less pollution to the environment, while the rest commute or use their private automobiles.
Major Health Problems Affecting the Hunts Point Community
The Hunts Point community experiences the major health problems in asthma, injuries, and obesity which impact maternal-child health. The community hospitalization rates concerning asthma and diabetes are higher than in New York City. With the inclusion of injury in the community as the same proportional level as the city, the three major causes of hospitalization replicates in child health. The Hunt Point community records a high rate of children hospitalization due to asthma to the extent of missing schools. Asthma prevalence in the community calls for parents to acquire a written medical plan that helps maintain condition maintenance (Bronx community district, 2018). Parents can also prevent early childhood asthma hospitalization by reducing trigger presence such as molds, smoke, and pests.
The community also records a quarter of the K to 8-grade children with obesity. The condition at an early age affects the learners’ education when hospitalized. Medicaid provisions ensure that the children get treatment to create a productive and healthy community. Lastly, injury is another major cause of childhood emergencies. The injuries arise from baby falls as they learn to maneuver around and understand the environment. Other causative agents entail motor-vehicle crashes and burns. Parents should be careful during early childhood and prevent such injuries from occurring, enhancing healthy living, and minimizing hospitalization tendencies.
Factors in Hunts Point that Contribute to Illnesses During Childbearing
The child mortality rate fluctuates in the Hunts Point community. There are negative factors that contribute to illnesses during the childbearing period, including inadequacies in prenatal and preconception care for pregnant women, poor nutrition, and racial discrimination. Despite the struggle to reduce child mortality by focusing on the contribution factors, whites and people’s death gaps persist (NYC Health Profile, 2003).
Research indicates that the non-Latino blacks’ record high mortality rates in comparison to the non-Latina whites. Issues such as poor nutrition during pregnancy impact infant formation, resulting in congenital disabilities, which are among the top causes of child mortality rates in Hunts Point. Additionally, poor nutrition results in low birth weight, and the infants suffer the consequences of being prone to illnesses accounting for poor immunity. Most of the underweight children die within the first year of birth.
Lack of attaining prenatal care contributes to illness generation during childbearing due to lack of knowledge concerning precautionary measures that encompass pregnancy and infant protection. Prenatal care is essential as healthcare practitioners can identify underlying issues that can endanger the mother and unborn babies and take the right medical prevention measure (Bronx community district, 2018). Various strategic options can reduce the prevalence of childbearing illness contributing factors. It is crucial to address teen pregnancies as most of the child mortality victims are teenagers who fail to continue with studies after giving birth. Once the pregnancy issue has been solved, it will be easy for the young girls to progress with their education and hence meet their life time goals.
The strategies in the approach that may help combat the negative factors are building financial and programmatic infrastructure that ensures preventive care for the women while focusing on preconception and prenatal care for better outcomes (NYC Health Profile, 2003). Another strategic move is redesigning initiatives that ensure infant mortality reduction through community outreach programs that offer guidance and counseling to pregnant women concerning care and proper nutrition. Healthy nutrition endeavors include alcohol and drug abuse avoidance that causes defects in the growing infant.
The initiatives also offer screening and detection of chronic and sexually transmitted diseases that could affect the unborn babies and the mother (Sodik, & Nzilibili, 2017). Lastly, the strategic approach to racial discrimination correctly serves the different ethnicities in the Hunts Point community by ensuring that the doctors possess best practices depicting equity treatment. Additionally, the strategy works by ensuring that the federal government enforces the civil rights concerning nondiscrimination in healthcare delivery and financing workforce diversity for medical, educational opportunities.
Health and Human Services Agencies in Hunts Point Community
The health and human services agencies assist the community in meeting healthy individuals’ goals for smooth co-existence. Bella vista health center is located on a peninsula isolated from the Bronx neighborhood and offers healthier lives for the Hunts Point community (Bronx community district, 2018). The facility is culturally competent, involving bilingual staff who emanate from the community vicinity and offering a range of primary healthcare services to the residents. Bella vista health center opened in 2000 and saved the residents from traveling costs to acquire medical services. It delivers healthcare services affecting the community like asthma, HIV/AIDS, and obesity (Bronx community district, 2018). The center also has an equality clinic that offers primary care, sexual health, and social-behavioral health services.
The Hunts Point Alliance for children with community partnership is a human service agency that focuses on societal wellbeing. Its mission rests in the ability to connect families with organizations championing community service. It also facilitates and coordinates the children’s community children journey in their developmental stages. The connections entail families’ knowledge acquisition and their capabilities in supporting their children’s prenatal to eight years of development. The agencies’ governance team comprises early childhood local care providers and community residents (Bronx community district, 2018).
It focuses on increasing families and children caregivers’ access to child development services, including mental health, psychological and behavioral issues. The initiative builds community social capital that encourages venturing in program participation.
Another human service agency in the community is Hunts Point Alliance (HPAC), for children comprised of schools in the community and organizations supporting them. The 25 membership alliance comprising of seven schools and eighteen organizations accomplishes the wellbeing strategy for the local neighborhood children through supporting their intellectual, mental, social, and physical health.
The HPAC organization has historical successes that involve creating solidarity between organizations and individuals to identify and fulfill community needs. The alliance aims to build strong relations in the community leadership, highlighting student opportunities, reducing effort duplication, and championing change in the systemic operations (Bronx community district, 2018). It also involves organization engagement and new partner recruitment to create supportive programs for filling gaps in family and children care. For instance, the HPAC alliance met all the Hunts Point schools in 2008 to address kindergarten readiness and early childhood development challenges. It launched an early childhood development program that ensured education to the children and parent empowerment in supporting its endeavors.
The Nursing Steps in Referring a Family to a Human Service Agency
As a nurse, I will consider all the healthcare delivery measures in conducting a family referral to an agency. The first step entails patient diagnosis by identification of the underlying illness and the prevalent symptoms. I will ensure that the patient understands their condition before proceeding with treatment (Bronx community district, 2018). The second step is disease treatment while focusing on recovery and healthy living. As the patient works on the recovery measures, I engage in the nursing third step involving network coordination to identify a reliable human service agency for the patient. The chosen agency should offer comprehensive community services that the healing facility cannot provide, such as the HPAC alliance early childhood development program initiative.
The fourth nursing step is a patient referral to a human agency that offers additional services to improve the patient’s wellbeing. The receiving agency should receive the patient and offer assistance regarding the condition requirements (Sodik, & Nzilibili, 2017). The next step is monitoring the patient and receiving organization as they work together for healthy living attainment. I possess the role of documenting the referral activity and the progression milestones. By monitoring and reporting the patient’s health progress, I will understand referral authenticity. The last step involves conducting quality assurance.
This move will assist the nursing practice in deducing agency referral value in situations such as the early development initiatives in children. The referral is also crucial as it supports developing community interrelation and healthy co-existence.
The Importance of a Healthy Community Regarding Successful Childbearing
A healthy community is a determinant factor for the successful childbearing process. The health and human service agencies emphasize programs and initiatives championing early childhood development, and the community wellbeing aims to establish healthy living. Maternal and child health is important in community progress (Sodik, & Nzilibili, 2017). To ensure successful childbearing, the community supports women’s wellbeing during pregnancy to identify health risks and prevent impending health problems at birth and infant mortality rate.
During pregnancy, the health risks identified include diabetes, genetic conditions, hypertension, and sexually transmitted disease, though proper treatment and care ensure childbearing success. The mothers’ behavior, nutritional value, and health status impact the infants’ physical and mental development. The doctor’s recommendations to women’s folic acid use during pregnancy reduce infants’ neural tube defects.
The importance of increasing access to preconception care, prenatal, and interconception periods allow women to experience a risk-free and healthy life that positively impacts their maternal health. Additionally, a healthy community supports beneficial birth outcomes and can easily detect and treat infant developmental delays and underlying health conditions. This capability results in infant death and disability prevention enabling the children to live positively and attain educational achievement (Sodik, & Nzilibili, 2017). Also, community integration, which fosters solidarity and pregnancy health adherence in families, prevents violence risks during prenatal care and the mothers replicate the same in childbearing. The parent’s love for children enables them to provide essential care and avoid maltreatment to ensure healthy living.
A healthy community ensures successful childbearing through families’ involvement in human service agencies that improve children’s health status. The community leadership allows parents to participate in the program events by linking them to organizations and caregivers for early childhood development issues. The initiative also improves the children’s nurturing and safety experiences with neighborhood involvement. The existence of insurance plans also enables community members to lead a healthy life through affordable care (Sodik, & Nzilibili, 2017). The high-quality health care that children enjoy through medical home and other maternity care requirements like exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months and birth promotes child health and reduces mortality rate in the community.
In conclusion, community health is a crucial aspect of socio-economic growth and development. The Hunts Point in New York City is a community that experiences problems in the health sector that impacts children’s health. Asthma, obesity, and injuries are problems in the community that results in a high percentage of children hospitalization, affecting their educational progress. The contributing factors to illnesses in the community during childbearing include discrimination, poor nutrition, and prenatal care, increasing that mortality rate percentage. The community employs specific strategies in solving the factors to ensure a healthy interaction.
It calls for equity in the nurses’ healthcare practice and eliminates discrimination tendencies through law enforcement. It also initiates community programs that offer counseling and guidance concerning proper nutrition at the society level and funds clinics that support prenatal care. The Hunts Point has health centers and human service agencies supporting the community members in attaining healthy living. A healthy community defines the childbearing success of its members. Communities must invest in the improvement of the health status of their members. A health community is evident in educational achievement and socioeconomic- status improvement among the society members.
References
Bronx community district. (2018). Hunts Point and Longwood. Web.
NYC Health Profile. (2003). Community health profile. Web.
Sodik, M. A., & Nzilibili, S. M. M. (2017). The role of health promotion and family support with attitude of couples childbearing age in following family planning program in health. Journal of Global Research in Public Health, 2(2), 82-89.