Approaches and Strategies in Community Health Outreach

PLANNING FOR COMMUNITY HEALTH OUTREACH

Planning for Community health Outreach

The three broad categories that I chose from the leading health Indicators are infant deaths, current use of any tobacco products among adolescents, and maternal deaths. With regard to infant deaths, Healthy People reported that infant deaths were associated with disparities in geographical locations, income, and race/ethnicity1. The policy level objective to be enacted to reduce the rate of infant deaths in the community would be to ensure that public health agencies work together with healthcare providers, other healthcare partners, and communities to address the behavioral and social health factors that affect birth outcomes and contribute to infant mortality - beginning with jurisdictions that have high rates of infant deaths. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that this was likely to increase understanding of infant mortality and thus reduce its rate1.

Like infant deaths, the rate of maternal deaths is also linked to disparities by race/ethnicity and income levels. Therefore, the policy level objective that can be implemented for the rate of maternal deaths would be to improve the medical care quality for women prior, during, and after pregnancy to include maternal mortality surveillance for all reproductive health complications starting with women from developing countries2. This is more so the case given that the said countries tend to have high rates of deaths related to childbirth and other factors related to pregnancy.

The third measurement relates to the use of any tobacco products among adolescents. The CDC observes that a high number of tobacco use began at childhood and adolescent. For this reason, a health policy objective would be use of smoke-free initiatives and advancement of cessation efforts in homes and public places so as to ensure that youths and children do not pick up the habit3.