Nursing Research Paper: Raising Awareness on Communicable Diseases among a Group of Female Adolescents: Effective or Not?

Raising Awareness on Communicable Diseases among a Group of Female Adolescents: Effective or Not?
Hailey Tarlini
Santa Fe College
HSC 4624: Global Health 101
Dr. Kezia Awadzi
December 2, 2020
Raising Awareness on Communicable Diseases among a Group of Female Adolescents: Effective or Not?
Protecting the right to health of people of all age ranges is a specific, important, and global concern in the area of public health. There is one particular age group that this future research would like to explore, though: the adolescents and female adolescents, specifically.
The World Health Organization (as cited by Skolnik, 2016) defines an adolescent to be someone between 10 to 19 years old, while some countries may have their age range for the same term. Regardless, the adolescents are chosen as the age group for this paper because it is globally considered a difficult and transitional period and comprise a large number of the human population and that they are future adult citizens.
There are many pressing needs in terms of health that must be addressed for adolescents. However, one of the most common of these are the risks of communicable diseases that pose even more exposure to young aged individuals—and, even more so, the age where reproductive health matters. Specifically, this research would like to focus on female adolescents to narrow down the subjects as well because it is the girls aged 10-19 may also be susceptible to different types of pressures, especially peer and sex-related pressures (Gupta et al., 2004; Samkange-Zeeb et al., 2011). In addition, Skolnik (2016) also revealed in Chapter 11 that four of the leading deaths for the adolescent period are communicable diseases—and I would like to specifically discuss more on sexually transmitted diseases (STD), which pose a serious hazard in the reproductive health of teenagers, too.
Exploring this topic is also relevant, interesting, and timely because it is not merely a problem of one culture or even one time. For example, it is mentioned in the study by Gupta et al. (2004) how female adolescents in India also encounter the same problem—and it is not true that STDs and other related communicable diseases are merely a problem of adolescents in developing countries. This is proven in the separate article by Samkange-Zeeb et al. (2011), where they made a scholarly discoursed on the same topic in European subjects.
Every global health concern is undeniably challenging to address, but it is not entirely impossible, provided the solutions are fitting to the problems being solved. There are numerous interventions to help against communicable diseases among female adolescents. The continuation of this paper aims to weigh all of these—with a strong focus on raising awareness through campaigns, programs, and seminars.
Why it is a Global Issue
According to WHO, more than 1 million STIs are acquired every day. More than 500 million people live with genital HSV, and over 300 million women have an HPV infection, which is the primary cause of cervical cancer (WHO, 2019). The highest age group is 20-24 years, followed by 15- 19. 988 000 pregnant women were infected with syphilis in 2016, resulting in over 350 000 adverse birth outcomes including 200 000 stillbirths and newborn deaths (WHO, 2019). Since all countries on the planet grapple with STI infections and the enormity of these numbers and the fact that STIs are some of the most communicable diseases, make the problem a global health issue.
Adolescents are more likely to get STIs because of their behavioral and biological predisposition. Adolescent females are more likely to contract STIs like CT and HPV because of lower production of cervical mucus and increased cervical ectopy (Shannon & Klausner, 2019). First, they are more likely to engage in high-risk sexual behavior without a condom due to the partially developed prefrontal cortex responsible for executive decisions. Secondly, one of the key social issues that exacerbate the issue is that adolescents are less likely to access and utilize sexual health services like adults (Shannon & Klausner, 2019). These factors lead to higher chances of exposure and lower chances of diagnosis and treatment.
Available Interventions: Pros and Cons
(Morales, et al., 2018)found out that sexual health promotion interventions are effective in promoting sexual health through increasing condom use. The efficiency of condom use stems from the fact that hardly bodily fluid mix during sex.
Pros and Cons
One of the main advantages of promoting sexual health education is that it also helps prevent teenage and unwanted pregnancy. Secondly, this preventive approach can be administered in various settings; schools, through the media, churches, etc., are easy to use and adaptable to various situations. One of the main disadvantages of sexual health promotion is that it is mostly ignored. Adolescents know and understand why they have to use condoms but still ignore it. Its efficacy depends on adherence to its teachings, and many adolescents tend to ignore the same directives they are told to observe. Secondly, some communities or cultures discourage condom use because it is perceived as evil and wrong.
Another common and largely effective intervention is vaccination. There are some STIs that can be prevented by vaccination, i.e., hepatitis B though the immunity wanes over a period of time.
Pros and Cons
One of the advantages of vaccination is that it is a preventive measure with very high prevention measures against infection (Marrazzo & Cates, 2011). Secondly, if vaccination is well administered to a target population, it can create herd immunity and prevent infection even to those who are not infected. On...