Health promotion across primary, secondary, and tertiary levels in nursing

Health Promotion in the Area of Heart Health

Health Promotion is a responsibility of the medical community that extends into many areas of the public sphere. This denotes a responsibility for nursing professionals in all contexts to take part in health promotion initiatives, which are frequently channeled through private doctor's offices, hospitals, public clinics, school infirmary facilities and other such outlets. The role of the nurse in the area of health promotion, generally speaking, is to help disseminate information through direct interaction with patients and/or clients. The heath promotion subject driving the three articles selected for consideration here is 'heart health' which is viewed as a public health priority extending into the areas of exercise and nutritional diet.

The use of the health belief model should contribute to the construction of an examination that seeks to alter negative health behavior through nurse-driven health promotion by isolating such root causes as poor diet and sedentary lifestyle and establishing empirical connections for the patient between patterns and consequences. Our research finds that the health belief model bases its approach on the premise that the individual will tend only to take preventative healthcare actions or positive health if certain conditions are present. Namely, 1) the individual must believe that it is feasible to avoid the negative health condition at issue; 2) the individual must believe that by taking an action which has been recommended by a public health campaign, that it will be likely that the individual can avoid this condition.; and, 3) the individual must believe that the recommended action can be adhered to successfully. (TCW, 1)

The Health Belief Model would contribute to a multilevel discussion on how to proceed with Health Promotion objectives. Here, the primary level of health promotion is seen as outreach and education in exercise and nutrition. The secondary level is seen as actual engagement in nutritional diet and exercise. The tertiary level is viewed as personal physical therapy and nutrition consultation for those already struggling with negative heart health indicators such as obesity or sedentary lifestyle.

Primary:

A study by Sidman et al. (2004) offers some useful insight into the ways in which an intervention might be successfully applied by showing how the construction of personal achievement goals can help to facilitate the initiation of a new and more active lifestyle. This qualifies as a primary health promotion activity for its provision to subjects of a way to connect particular benchmarks with heart health goals. Here, health promotion is defined as the contribution of a method for monitoring one's self-directed progress in regular exercise modes.

The study's invocation of the use of the pedometer as a way to encourage meeting numerical benchmarks and monitoring them of one's own volition may offer us a template for endowing those individuals at subject with the means to prevent obesity and participate in regular, healthy exercise. Such is to say that a positive health promotion program will help the subject set attainable goals for the routinization and improvement of an exercise regiment. The primary purpose of this promotion is to help individuals find ways to monitor and push for their own individually measured exercise courses.

The nurse has the important role here of helping to provide advocacy for those attempting to engage in such self-driven activities. Nurses should be dispatched to help individuals taking on these challenges to decide on an exercise regimen which is right for them.

Secondary:

Evidence proceeding from our research also denotes that daily physical activity can especially benefit youths who are contextualized by organized settings such as schools and extra-curricular sporting leagues. Christodolous et al. (2006) find that "children who reported less than 30 minutes of daily participation in physical activity demonstrated lower prevalence rates for overweight and obesity as well as superior fitness performance. The detrimental effect of the summer break on the progress of physical fitness was less in children who did participate in physical activity than in those who did not." (Christodolous et al., 199) This helps to suggest a secondary level of health promotion which uses crucial avenues for shared physical activeness as a way to court better heart health.

Here, health promotion is defined as the drive to gain participation for youths in activities which can serve as a measure of prevention against negative heart health indicators such as obesity, high blood pressure and sedentary lifestyle. The purpose of the promotion would be to increase direct participation in activities such as organization sport leagues, intramural leagues, recreational leagues or even independently organized but regular sporting events. Nurses should take part in this promotion by providing families and youths with materials offering them contact information and points of access to participation in such leagues.

Tertiary:

The tertiary health promotion activity is defined according to the research by Nies et al. (2006). This offers a critical comparison of three distinction intervention modes, each of which employs the activity of walking as way to promote activity in sedentary women. Here, promotion is conducted using video education, telephone calls with no counseling and telephone calls with counseling, the Nies study found that telephone counseling in particular was an effective and engaging mode of intervention with women who are sedentary. The purpose of this promotion is to attend to the needs of those individuals who have become most isolated by the nature and physical, emotional and social implications of their condition. This isolation is an issue for many demographics who are particularly vulnerable to obesity and its related spectrum of conditions. Nurses should consider those who are at high risk due to advanced cases of obesity as candidates for direct engagement in regiments for regular but properly paced physical activities. This should also include helping these individuals gain access to the proper resources for physical therapy assistance.