Descriptive Epidemiology Promises for the Future

Descriptive Epidemiology: Future Considerations

Topic 1: Descriptive epidemiology offers clinicians a look at the bigger picture of how disease manifests because it creates a way of arranging and assessing data in order to “understand variations in disease frequency geographically and over time, and how disease (or health) varies among people based on a host of personal characteristics (person, place, and time)” (bu.edu). As a result of these methods, it provides clinicians with the ability to spot patterns within health and disease, empowering them to engage in planning resources for populations and communities. Descriptive epidemiology is also important in developing hypotheses about the main factors of certain health conditions and disease. This is important because it means that descriptive epidemiology offers a starting point for analytic epidemiology, which officially investigates the connections between possible determinants and certain health or disease outcomes. There are numerous jobs that descriptive epidemiology can complete, such as observing and recording the health status and general health habits in communities; pinpointing developing health issues; making the public aware of certain threats within bioterrorism; asserting the main public health priorities for a general population; assessing the overall success of intervention programs, and determining the possible connections between risk factors and health outcomes so that a deeper understanding of the causes and factors of disease can be generated (bu.edu).

In my practice, descriptive epidemiology can definitely be used to improve care as it can shed light on health behaviors that are localized to a certain population or group within the community. It can help to illuminate habits that impact health and help clinicians like me to help spot arenas that need to be changed. For example, if many of the men in a certain community all of a sudden start suffering from tooth decay, it would be important to look at their eating and drinking habits. They might all be imbibing in the same high-acid and sugary drinks at a local store or bar during or after work.

Topic 2: An epidemiological study design that I would select in order to determine the effectiveness of an interventions within this population, would simply be an observational study. Within observational studies, “the researcher observes and systematically collects information, but does not try to change the people (or animals, or reagents) being observed” (uottowa.ca). This would occur without attempting to intervene on the subjects in any way.   The selected population would be low-income men over the age of 30 in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of east Los Angeles. The study would join a group of the men to study their lifestyle and to determine the habits they had that were negatively impacting their health and well-being. This observational study would also be used to determine if certain interventions were working, such as nutritional education to help prevent obesity and diabetes. The nutritional intervention provided things to the men like a sample of a healthy diet, and the necessity of limiting then umber of tortillas eaten per day. Simply observing the men and their eating and drinking habits could definitely help illuminate the strengths and weaknesses of the given intervention. For instance, sometimes simply educating people isn’t enough to help change their habits. Sometimes people need even more motivation such as stern presentations of the ultimate damage their lifestyles can create. Adults have often had their daily habits for decades, which can make them harder to change and make these participants even more set in their ways. Determining how effective this nurtirtional intervention has actually been in the daily lives of these men will ultimately show researchers the ways the intervention should be adjusted for the future, and the ways that it is helping these men to establish lasting change.

Topic- 3: APNs can work together with direct care nurses to help adopt evidence-based changes in order to better the way that health literacy manifests in practice by making all of it more accessible to patients. “Health literacy in the U.S. reflects what health systems and professionals do to make health information and services understandable and actionable. Professionals, the media, and public and private sector organizations often present information in ways that make it difficult to understand and act on. Publicly available health information can also be incomplete or inaccurate” (health.gov). So many times in the past when nurses of all levels and realms of experience attempt to improve health literacy, they do it in a way that is completely nebulous to the average patient, by simply espousing research and hoping that patients will make the appropriate changes. It’s an approach that is very out of touch with reality. It’s really not fair to ask the patient to weed through information that is too complex, too wordy or too technical. APNs can definitely work with direct care nurses in an attempt to bridge these gaps, so that their patients are more empowered about how to engage in self-care.

Together, these clinicians can work together to make sure that all health literacy information is communicated in plain language and that it isn’t just written communication: the information given needs to have pictures and simple diagrams given (health.gov). All health literacy information also needs to be culturally appropriate to the patients, and ideally it needs to align with support structures available in the community. For example, if nurses are trying to encourage a population of people to exercise, they could have a list and a map of all the available free or low-cost gyms in the area.

Topic- 4: One instance where a patient’s culture could have a negative impact on health literacy, could be an example of how in certain religions, such as Buddhism, there’s a strong belief in the notion of karma, and that in this lifetime, people are essentially living out their karma from previous lives. So for example, if someone’s born obese, this could be seen as karmic retribution from a previous life. Such a mentality could prevent the patient from attempting to lose the weight and become healthier, as one might feel as though one is living out one’s fate and that the greater creator determined that one should be overweight, and that is the whole point of his/her destiny in this lifetime. This would definitely be a marked challenge for the healthcare provider, as it would mean he or she would have to figure out how to respect the individual’s religion, yet still help to make suggestions that can cause a higher level of change in this person’s life. For example, it might be useful to say that no human can fully understand God’s plan and that perhaps the creator intended for one to be born overweight so that one can deal with the challenge of losing the weight. Religious and cultural beliefs can interfere with being healthy an engaging in proactive efforts to make meaningful change in one’s overall health practice.