Needs Assessment For Maternal And Child Health Services Among Indigenous Population In Melbourne

Types of Needs in Healthcare Context

Discuss about the Health Needs Assessment And Program.

Needs assessment can be defined as the systematic process of identifying the health needs of a particular population that has been left unaddressed and taking efforts and actions to identify or meet the unmet needs. It can be mentioned as the epidemiological and qualitative approach to identifying different priorities encompassing clinical and cost effective methods that takes patients consideration in to perspective (Miller & Maloney, 2013). The needs assessment process will need to take into consideration the facts about “what can be done”, “what should be done” and along with that, “what can be afforded”. However, when needs assessment is applied to the construct of health care services, it is also imperative for the needs assessment process to distinguish between individual needs and community focused needs so that the strategic program can address the issues faced by the entire community (Altschuld & Watkins, 2014). This assignment will attempt to take into consideration the needs assessment of the maternal and child health services carried in place for the indigenous individuals belonging to the locality of Melbourne.

Needs in the contrast of health care is extremely diverse, there are different types of needs present in the health care context for a community. The community selected for this paper is the aboriginal population and the health sector for the needs assessment of the paper is maternal and child health care services. According to the recent research, it has to be mentioned that there are significant disparities in the maternal and child health status among the natives and the nonnatives in the Australian context (Lowitja.org.au., 2018). Along with that, it also needs to be established in this context that there are considerable disparities in the birth and pregnancy outcomes between the mainstream society and the aboriginals. Along with that, there is a need for prioritizing the response practice in the maternal and child health services for the aboriginals. It has to be mentioned in this context that although there have been many programs that has been designed with the aim to improve the maternal and child health status of the aboriginals, the expected improvement in their health status has not been observed yet. Taking the context of Melbourne into account, it has to be mentioned that there still are a few unmet needs that has to be addressed in order to improve the maternal and child health status of the individuals (Melbourne.vic.gov.au., 2018).                          

Disparities in Maternal and Child Health Status among Indigenous Population

The needs assessment procedure for this project will have two specific segments. It has to be mentioned that the most impactful contributing factor to the low maternal and child health among the aboriginals is the lack of health literacy. According to the Pennel et al. (2015), most of the aboriginals lack the knowledge and understanding of the basic health promotional behaviors and precautions that are needed to be taken in both prenatal and post natal stages. The first phase of the expressed needs assessment focused on semi structured interviews involving the new mothers, would be mothers and their families to understand the level of literacy. According to Vincent et al. (2012), it has to be mentioned that for the expressed needs which can be felt needs as well, opting for a one-to-one approach like semi-structured interviews is crucial. For comparative or normative needs of the community it is very important to assess the disparities cultural and policy oriented among the aboriginals and non-aboriginals, the needs assessment had been a survey involving maternal and child health services across Melbourne to assess the delivery rates and maternal and child health status between aboriginals and non-aboriginals. The help seeking behavior among the aboriginals during and after pregnancy and their understanding about the policy advantages regarding immunization and other maternal and child health services. As per Altschuld and Watkins (2014), the comparative needs are best assessed in the form of surveys or inspections using different survey tools such as survey monkey. Hence, this project also used the above mentioned two needs assessment technique for assessment of all of the needs.

One of the first set of challenges that have been identified is the acute lack of literacy and knowledge regarding the maternal and child health in both prenatal and post natal stage. Especially in the rural regions, the traditional superstitions and beliefs regarding the need for immunization and health care needs among the aboriginals have been identified is very low. The lack of culturally safe care delivery has been identified as another very crucial need that resists the aboriginals from availing the maternal and child health services. The low staffing ratio and the lack of culturally appropriate care delivery training and competence among the existing staff has also been identified as a significant need. Lastly, although the health policies have taken into consideration the need for improvement of maternal and child health services with free delivery, immunization and post natal care, the reason behind the huge disparity among the maternal and child health among aboriginals and non-aboriginals is the lack of awareness among the aboriginals is very low regarding the policy benefits they are eligible for.

Needs Assessment Process

For the needs assessment procedure analysis of the strength, weakness, opportunity and threats of the current healthcare condition in chosen are chiefly essential. One of the major strength of the current healthcare condition in Melbourne is it is comparatively better than the other part of the urban or metropolitan surrounding areas (Boyle et al., 2012). Frequent collaborative decision within the local and national level government for improving the healthcare service for the local indigenous people is the main cause behind it. However, one of the noticeable weaknesses of the local healthcare system in Melbourne that are organized for indigenous people are it lacks proper registration and enlisting procedure. The major cause of this dilemma is the scattered distribution of the Indigenous community in the semi urban area surrounding the major Urban and metropolitan zone of development. At the same time, most of the people in aboriginal community are still unaware of the new project and health care program that the local and the national level government have been already initiated (Australian Institute of Health., 2012). Although, the local authority and healthcare service regulators are trying to make the aboriginal community concerned about their health issues, lack of education and awareness are hindering the execution process of healthcare awareness, especially for maternal and child health during and post pregnancy period. 

There are some opportunities to improve the awareness within the target community considering expansion of distributed health clinic camp within the semi urban and rural area. The situation can be more assertive if the nearest government and even private healthcare organizations and hospitals can help the distributed health camps by providing additional manpower, equipment and resource material. As per the recent reports on healthcare human resource the government organized health program and initiations are experiencing limited volume of workforce and unsatisfied volunteers and non volunteers employees (Anderson et al., 2016). These are causing additional distress in this situation. Along with that, lack of training for culturally competent approach and less involvement of people from aboriginal community in healthcare services are the major threats.

The name of the program is Maternal Health Campaign. This campaign will be organized in a distributive manner where all the local health-camps will be responsible for executing the campaigns as per the planning.

The aim of this health campaign or program is to make aware the indigenous community of target area about the maternal and child healthcare needs during and after pregnancy period. The objectives of this campaign are:

• Making both male and female population aware of the regular dilatory and hygienic requirement of maternal and child health during and after pregnancy period
• Introducing the community to the government initiated healthcare schemes and facilities
• Enlisting the registering the pregnant population in the community in government and private low cost and free healthcare schemes

Identified Needs

The set of wall char will be displayed to show the impact of unhealthy lifestyle in pregnancy and post pregnancy period.

The local influential personal will be deliver speeches on the chosen topic and how the topic is feasible in existing situation of the community.

The pregnant women and infants will be identified and enlisted in free healthcare checkup and low cost treatment program those are powered by various NGO as well as Government undertaking organization. 

In evaluation section, the local health camp members and various survey teams will be keeping the documentation of the event while monitoring the effectiveness of this campaign on the target community through collecting feedbacks. As per these identifications, the further groups of peoples who will need the health assessment will be identified and enlisted in the existing health service schemes.  

Conclusion:

From the above discussion, it can be said that, this assignment will attempt to take into consideration the needs assessment of the maternal and child health services carried in place for the indigenous individuals belonging to the locality of Melbourne. Along with that, it also needs to be established in this context that there are considerable disparities in the birth and pregnancy outcomes between the mainstream society and the aboriginals. Apart from that, for the needs assessment procedure, analysis of the strength, weakness, opportunity and threats of the current healthcare condition in chosen community are chiefly essential.

References:

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander maternal and child health and wellbeing: a systematic search of programs and services in Australian primary health care settings | The Lowitja Institute. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.lowitja.org.au/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-maternal-and-child-health-and-wellbeing-systematic-search

Altschuld, J. W., & Watkins, R. (2014). A primer on needs assessment: More than 40 years of research and practice. New Directions for Evaluation, 2014(144), 5-18.

Anderson, I., Robson, B., Connolly, M., Al-Yaman, F., Bjertness, E., King, A., … & Pesantes, M. A. (2016). Indigenous and tribal peoples’ health (The Lancet–Lowitja Institute Global Collaboration): a population study. The Lancet, 388(10040), 131-157.

Australian Institute of Health. (2012). Australia’s Health 2012: In Brief. AIHW.

Boyle, J. A., Cunningham, J., O’Dea, K., Dunbar, T., & Norman, R. J. (2012). Prevalence of polycystic ovary syndrome in a sample of Indigenous women in Darwin, Australia.

Maternal and child health – City of Melbourne. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/community/health-support-services/for-my-family/Pages/maternal-child-health.aspx

Miller, J., & Maloney, C. (2013). Practitioner compliance with risk/needs assessment tools: A theoretical and empirical assessment. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 40(7), 716-736.

Pennel, C. L., McLeroy, K. R., Burdine, J. N., & Matarrita-Cascante, D. (2015). Nonprofit hospitals’ approach to community health needs assessment. American journal of public health, 105(3), e103-e113.

Rch.org.au. (2018). Centre for Community Child Health : Aboriginal Maternal and Child Health Initiative Evaluation. [online] Available at: https://www.rch.org.au/ccch/research-projects/Aboriginal_Maternal_and_Child_Health_Initiative_Evaluation [Accessed 5 Jul. 2018].

Vincent, G. M., Paiva-Salisbury, M. L., Cook, N. E., Guy, L. S., & Perrault, R. T. (2012). Impact of risk/needs assessment on juvenile probation officers’ decision making: Importance of implementation. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 18(4), 549.