Community Health Problem and Improvement Plan
Health Problem from My Community’s Health Improvement Plan
The health problem in my community health improvement plan is the prevalence of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) within my community. Over the years, my community health practitioners, doctors, and nurses have recorded a constant increase in the number of individuals who are testing positive of HIV/AIDS. This has been a big worry and for members of my community at large. Sadly, it has been reported that 12% of teenagers from my community contacts HIV and AIDS yearly. This is a result of social media influences, insecurities, and linkages with culture such as silence even on sex violence and predominant early marriages. Also, the struggle to meet the basic survival needs of youths has led to risky sexual behaviors hence a driver of HIV and AIDS in my community. Similarly, insecurity has led moral decadence leading to cases of rape and prostitution within my community hence increasing vulnerability of HIV and AIDS infection.
The Structure and Process
The structure I will adopt to evaluate a program that can best address the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in my community is known as a team-based structure. That is, I plan to form an independent team consisting of both the community health workers and few literate members of the community. According to Celletti (2010), community health workers are important because they have experience and skills for managing HIV and AIDS. While the literate members of the community to help me in designing a successful program that everyone in my community can understand, cope up with, and accept. Additionally, the health improvement process that I will use in developing a program for addressing the prevalence of HIV and AIDS in my community is shown as below,
- First, I plan to analyze the community health problem considering social class, age, and behaviors of infected individuals.
- Assessing the available community health resources that can be used in managing the community health problem. This includes funding, donations, expertise, and people willing to volunteer to educate members of the community on HIV and AIDS.
- Developing community health improvement strategies. These strategies must reflect on the available resources to avoid inconveniencies.
- Discussing and negotiating the health improvement measures to determine where accountability lies
- Developing a set of indicators for accountable health programs within the community. This will provide an overview of the general community health status hence focusing on areas that need improvements. Additionally, the selection of indicators should be done carefully considering both the risk factors and health outcomes.
- Implementation of the health improvement strategies to address the prevalence of HIV and AIDS within the community. Implementing the measures to curb the spread of HIV and AIDS will be done in the presence of the community publicly. This is to help members of the community to respond successfully to the measures set in place.
- Lastly is monitoring the outcome of the health improvement measures. This is done to re-examine and replace ineffective measures that do not add value to the fight of HIV and AIDS in my community.
The Expected Outcome Standards
The outcome standards and aim for evaluating and addressing the prevalence of HIV and AIDS in my community is to,
- Prevent any new HIV and AIDS infections within the community
- Improve the health standards for members of the community living with HIV and AIDS
- Lower HIV and AIDS-related inequities and health disparities within the community
- Continually develop effective and efficient improvement plans that can enhance the wellbeing of the community
The outcome standards are only proving the ability of the team in addressing this problem. This is because they offer guidance that aims at preventing the spread of HIV and AIDS and treatment services. According to Bemelmans (2016), HIV and AIDS management strategies within a community need to be implemented based on the cost, the feasibility of coverage, targeted population, cost, and the possibility of implementation.
References
Bemelmans, M., Baert, S., Negussie, E., Bygrave, H., Biot, M., Jamet, C., … & Ford, N. (2016). Sustaining the future of HIV counseling to reach 90‐90‐90: a regional country analysis. Journal of the International AIDS Society, 19(1), 20751.
Celletti, F., Wright, A., Palen, J., Frehywot, S., Markus, A., Greenberg, A., … & Samb, B. (2010). Can the deployment of community health workers for the delivery of HIV services represent an effective and sustainable response to health workforce shortages? Results of a multicountry study. Aids, 24, S45-S57.