Health Promotion and Breast Cancer Awareness (Essay Sample)

NURSING
Name
Institution
Health Promotion and Breast Cancer Awareness
Health promotion is the process that supports people as individuals, groups and communities to increase their knowledge and awareness concerning health issues and diseases. This in turn supports and empowers people to improve their health. There are many studies and evidence that support the importance of health promotion in reducing the burden of diseases, especially reducing the spread of diseases that occur in vulnerable communities and populations. Health education is one of important methods of health promotion that leads to improved health literacy for communities, individuals and families. This paper will discuss health promotion and how the education will be used as one of health promotion methods to deliver the information. Secondly, the paper examines why health education has an important role of the community health nurse. Finally, this paper will identify Anne Giovanni’s learning needs, in regards to breast cancer awareness, and develop a health education plan which can meet these needs.
Health Promotion in Today’s Society
Health promotion is a crucial component of providing health care to individuals, groups, and communities. It is most important especially in cases of managing chronic illnesses such as cancer, HIV/AIDS, diabetes, tuberculosis, bipolar mood disorders, hypothyroidism, hypertension, hemophilia and cardiomyopathy. The main goals of health promotion are to prevent theprevalence of these chronic illnesses and in the end prevent premature deaths (Keleher & Parker 2013, p. 215). Health promotion is also aimed at changing people’s behaviours and beliefs so that they can adopt quality lifestyles that promote their health conditions. Health promotion requires theactive participation of both health care providers and the target groups. There are many strategies adopted to achieve health promotion, and the main one is health education. Health education is mostly propagated by health professionals with relevant skills in collaboration with communities and other vulnerable groups. Health educators have adopted evidence-based strategies to disseminate their information and hence achieve their goals. Health education adopts plans that enable imparting of knowledge to people about prevailing health issues that allow them to make healthy choices to avoid contracting these health conditions. Health promotion is, therefore, essential and an integral component in promoting healthy practices among people, groups and societies.
Health promotion advocates for community-based practices of promoting health, community engagement and health promotion strategies that are based on social and health policies. It encompasses involvement of individuals, groups, institutions or even communities, to increase control over their health, prevent disease as well as improve their health conditions. It is a behavioural, social science that takes into account disciplines such as sociology, physical, psychology, environmental, biological and clinical sciences. Community participation and building partnerships are the most important aspects of health promotion. Health promotion entails two major approaches to achieving its set objectives which include cooperative and procedural styles (Warr, Mann & Kelahar 2013, p. 95). The cooperative approach entails a number of organized activities characterized by epidemiological and subjective knowledge obtained from experiential engagement with local needs. The proceduralapproach, on the other hand, entails providing abstracted information through systematized procedures and processes of delivery.
Health promotion entails embracing behaviors aimed at strengthening one’s capability to alleviate their impact on health. It also focuses on lifestyle and community engagement and participation all of which are social determinants of health equity. Health promotion not only improves the quality of life of individuals but most importantly, helps reduce chances of premature deaths, such as the case of HIV/AIDS awareness, testing and treatment. In the latter case, health education helps in teaching the infected on how to live healthily and also teaches the un-infected on how to prevent transmission and contact with the virus. Health promotion is mostly achieved through education, fostering behavioral change in individuals and groups, coalition building, community development and environmental improvement. Health promotion specialists work in places such as health centers, hospitals, communities and institutions among other susceptible places. Social media platforms that are popular with younger age groups, such as Twitter and Facebook, health promotion is prevalent due to a presence of a huge target audience that consists of both young and experienced adults. For example, cancer awareness has been popular on social media whereby the audience is taught on the importance of healthy living and early testing for the reduction of cancer cases and mortality. Health promotion activities are mostly carried out by health professionals more so health care nurses because they are well conversant with health matters (Keleher& Parker 2013, p. 218). Health promoters have seen a number of challenges when trying to go about their activities. These include reliance on evidence-based practice that requires finding ways of encouraging people to adopt the practices referred to them by health care agents. Research has asserted that younger mothers are more likely to smoke, with about 57% of pregnant teenagers smoking before or during their pregnancy. The promotion of healthy socialization helps in the sensitization on smoking effects for pregnant women, thereby promoting healthy.
Furthermore, use of sophisticated technologies, such as brochures, posters, handouts, also newspaper and TV adverts and even bill-board posters, to disseminate information to communities is not quite effective especially with people who are not well conversant with these new technologies. This leads to the interventions by community health centers, GP clinics, and specialist clinics which help in the promotion of healthy living and offer effective treatment. Finally, it has proven difficult to foster mutual respect between the health promoters and the target audiences. This can be asserted through the use of technologies in health promotion, such as social media and