Health promotion

Health Promotion: Childbearing Women
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Introduction
The diversity of Canada’s society resulting to her statutory commitment towards multiculturalism has welcomed new challenges in the healthcare system. Different age brackets of immigrants have been faced with varied challenges most of which are instigated by cultural and linguistic barriers. Young women of childbearing age from the Muslim community residing in Hamilton, Ontario constitute a significant percentage of the total population of minority immigrants. Serious concerns on the immigrants’ maternity experiences and childcare have been raised with calls being made to ensure that medicals services are tailored towards user needs. Issues such as acceptability and accessibility to maternity care services have been seen as a contributory factor to the bad health care experiences of the young women. This paper will examine health challenges faced by Muslim women in age bearing brackets (>10 years), as well the right health care promotion initiatives such as equitable access to maternal care, which could be enhanced by a community nurse through capacity building. The issues will be addressed in four different stages.
Community assessment
The Canadian society, which is multicultural by nature, prioritizes commitment to equity in terms of access to healthcare services. Important to note is that many immigrants enter the country in relatively poor health status only to find a convergence in their health status within 10 years. Quite a number of explanations have been offered to demystify this scenario including acculturation, distrust in the western from of medication hence showing preference to traditional medicine, stress associated with relocation among others.
Previous studies done on Muslim women living in Hamilton, Ontario have established that the rights and needs of the women are highly marginalized in family setups, legislation as well as in community levels. Socio-economic marginalization coupled with the subsequent marginalization of these women is exacerbated by pregnancy hence making maternity an area that should be given attention by those who are involved in enhancing health care for the immigrants. A preliminary review by Gina et al. in the article “Immigrant women’s experiences of maternity-care services in Canada: a protocol for systematic review using a narrative synthesis” established that immigrant women are disadvantaged in terms of maternity and child care services as compared to native born women. They established that immigrant women’s’ chances of giving birth to a child with low birth weight stands at 43%.
In case of pre-term delivery and prenatal mortality, the percentages are 50 and 60 respectively. This is no doubt a depiction of the way the health care system with regard to maternity and childcare has been crippled among the immigrants. A recent Canadian study confirms the above-mentioned trends in childbirth among the immigrants. Children with low birth weights exert a further financial burden to the parents since because, according to the Canadian medical costs, the parent is forced to pay about nine times higher than a normal weight delivery. Although calculating birth weight of an infant may not be the overall measure in evaluating infant and maternal health, it is a factor that cannot be understated (Stamler & Yiu 2012).
Some of the other negative maternal characteristics which have been reported among the women immigrants of child bearing age include high rate of gestational diabetes and food proscriptions which results into low weight gain hence adversely affecting the growth and development of the new born. Others include genetic abnormalities such as neural-tube defects occurring due to lack of sufficient intake of folic acid.
Lack of adequate childcare initiatives for the Muslim women in Hamilton has brought into perspective the aspect of community nursing and capacity building. The women say that they lack the basic information concerning childcare, and this puts their children under a high risk of succumbing to healthcare related complications. Part of this problem can be attributed to the fact that there has been a language barrier between the health care givers and the Muslim women. In this context, a community nurse plays an important role of capacity building through promotion of equitable health promotion initiatives that encourage childbearing women to seek assistance from health facilities. The maternity and childcare related problems facing the Muslim women posses a great challenge to the population growth and overall well-being of the entire population of Hamilton. Maternal and childcare are actually the backbone of the healthcare system of any country that desires to make a meaningful step in ensuring that each citizen lives a healthy lifestyle.
The approach used by Simich et al. on community assessment is engaging the residents who provide understand the communities better. This approach is based on the belief that those who reside within the community under study ought to be partners in the journey to shape and seek solutions pertaining to the community. Various initiatives have been undertaken to curb this problem including endeavors to bridge the knowledge gap as far as maternity and childcare are concerned (MacDonnell, 2012).
Structure/planning process
The program I will use to address this health problem will be based on capacity building to ensure equitable access and that all barriers that prevent these women from accessing healthcare are addressed. First, language barrier, which posses as one of the main obstacles towards this, will be fully addressed. This will ensure that the immigrant women receive childcare,...