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Health Promotion Among Diverse Populations

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Health Promotion among Diverse Populations
Eric Valdez
Rasmussen University

Health Promotion among Diverse Populations
As this paper has been researched and written, this nurse has realized that our Hispanic Americans have a profound sense in their culture still imbedded within them to this day. Hispanic socioeconomic status, education background, culture and beliefs impact their health in such tremendous ways that it is difficult to believe that the healthcare system in America didn’t start enforcing patient learning strategies and patient education sooner.
According to the 2012 U.S. Census bureau report, the average Hispanic median household income was $40,417 in comparison to $56,565 for non-Hispanic Whites for full-time employment. In 2012, the U.S. Census bureau reported that 25.4 percent of Hispanics in comparison to 11 percent of non-Hispanic Whites were living in poverty ("HHS," 2015, para. 4). With this being mentioned, Hispanics maintain their health by utilizing their cultural upbringing rather than entertaining the thought of utilizing modern medicine due to the high cost of health care and insurance. This poses the largest of dilemmas. Shorter life spans while living in the states is on the up rise for the Hispanic population as they are acclimating to America’s rushed lifestyle and poor diets. (This is occurring more so for the Hispanic Americans than Hispanics born to their native countries, but this is increasing). The challenge now is for the healthcare professionals to educate Hispanics (individually and families) and Hispanic communities about modern day medicine in a way that they will not only trust us, but understand and incorporate what they learn into their culture so it will be acceptable.
The first step is to understand health promotion ourselves in order to evaluate our Hispanic patients of how they would define health promotion. Since we know that health promotion is essentially homeostasis; feeling well not only with your physical self, but your emotional self, spiritual self, and psychological self. Collectivist values or group orientation permeates Hispanic life and individuals often look to one another for opinions. A collectivist orientation may serve as a valuable asset in terms of health promotion ("Building Our Understanding," n.d., p. 4). Out of life experience in my nursing career, I have found that depending on the birth origin and age of my Hispanic patients, drastically changes to what level health promotion prevention is utilized. An 89 year-old female patient from Mexico that was in Arizona visiting family was ill, so they brought her to the hospital. Since she was already ill and now receiving modern medicine, tertiary prevention was initiated (Wexler, 2003). When she arrived to my unit, she had bilateral heel diabetic pressure ulcers, hypertension, and blind in her left eye. She was Spanish speaking only, and through a translator, she welcomed me and taught me how she learned and how she was taking care of herself in Mexico. Her learning was multimodal, so I set up the television to Spanish videos that taught about diabetes and hypertension and was able to stay in the room with her and the translator. We spoke throughout the videos so her questions were answered as we went along. This patient was extremely grateful for the time and education given to her and was almost embarrassed to tell me how she took care of her feet back home. As the discussion progressed, I learned that she soaked her feet in a tub with homemade bread on the bottom and covered her feet from her cow’s milk several times per day. After she understood the differences and was complying with blood sugar monitoring, diabetic medications, and hypertension medications, she was elated at how well she felt on the day of discharge.
However, when my 19 year-old female Hispanic neighbor, that was born and raised in Arizona, came over because she just learned she was pregnant and her new husband is a smoker. She is an aural learner and wanted to know as much as she could about smoking and what it could do to her, him, and the fetus. Primary prevention is the best choice for her in this instance and I provided her with websites that the two of them could look at and learn about smoking and what second hand smoke will do to others (Wexler, 2003).
The Hispanic race has several health disparities than non-Hispanics do. Some examples are female adult obesity as opposed to white adults. The adult prevalence of diabetes, hypertension, HIV, periodontitis. Poor compliance of colorectal cancer screening between the ages of 50-75 years, and poor amount of recipients of flu vaccinations from six months old to adults. In 2009, if Hispanic adults were hospitalized as much as Asian and Pacific Islander adults were, there would have been 240,000 less hospitalizations and saved $700 million. Also, in 2010, Hispanic ages 18 to 64 years-old were unemployed as opposed to white, non-Hispanic adults. Lastly, in 2011, Hispanic adults didn’t finish high school and made less than the Federal poverty level compared to non-Hispanic adults ("CDC Disparities," 2013, p. 1).
It was staggering to read the statistics within the past few years. Without proper education from school and a chance at a proper paying career that offers medical benefits, the domino effect leads Hispanics and their health to such tragic and devastating results.

References
Building Our Understanding: Culture Insights Communicating with Hispanic/Latinos. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dch/programs/healthycommunitiesprogram/tools/pdf/hispanic_latinos_insight.pdf
CDC Health Disparities and Inequalities. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/minorityhealth/populations/REMP/hispanic.html
Profile: Hispanic/Latino Americans. (2015). Retrieved from http://www.minorityhealth.hhs.gov/omh/browse.aspx?lvl=3&lvlid=64
Wexler, B. (2003). Health and Wellness: Illness among Americans. New York: Gale.

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