Ramsey County Community Health Assessment And Health Plan

Description of the Community

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One of the county’s of the U.S. State of Minnesota is The Ramsey County. The population of the county estimated was 538,133 by the 2015 census. According to census 2014, the population contained around 7.1% under five years of age, 23.4% were under eighteen years of age, and 12.9% were either sixty-five years and over. The Ramsey County is diversely populated.  Almost twenty-five percent of the citizens in the location were under eighteen years of age (Anderson et al., 2014).

According to Meredith (2014), the youth in this county with the highest pregnancy rate and educational disparities involve the “African American,”Asian American,”American Indian,” and “Latino teens.” In the year 2008, the pregnancy rate among the teen age people was the fifth highest in the State. When the health of the Population of the county is taken into consideration, it was noted that twelve percentage of the pool have poor health conditions. Moreover, people were involved in smoking, drinking, physically inactive and developed obesity. While studying the 2014 statistics it was observed that out of 1,00,000 people, 535.6 were STDs cases.

It was reported that in this area the teens use contraceptives erratically, that results in elevation of the unintentional pregnancy and “sexually transmitted diseases.” The causative agent of the STDs infection is “Chlamydia trachomatis.” Although there are a wide number of health care facilities in the Ramsey County, many of the residents have limited access to health care and also other resources of the community that may support the healthy living. Most of the group members of the Asians and the Hispanic residents who are without insurance. Moreover, many of them cannot afford the health care services (Guthmann, 2015).

On application of the nursing diagnosis for the “St. Paul Public School District” in the Ramsey County it was observed that there is an elevation in the teen pregnancy among females of the age between fifteen to seventeen years. This is due to the “single parent households” and thus limitation and difficulty in the engagement with the teens. The priority “nursing diagnosis” in the school was elected as the decreased use of sexual protections such as condoms, contraceptives, etc. leading to the increased risk of the STDs. The cause was of this STDs were observed as “Chlamydia” in students aging between fifteen to twenty four years (Ramsey-Musolf, 2015).

Nursing diagnosis

Depending on the medical diagnosis reported by the “Centers for Disease Control and Prevention” the nursing diagnosis included the reviewing of the medical diagnosis, the needs of the students who underwent unprotected sex were recognized, and nursing interventions were applied. There are around 115 STDs cases noted in this school. Comparing with other schools the number of STDs cases in this school was quite high. It ranks at the second position relating to the highest number of STDs cases in the schools of the Ramsey County. Therefore, the “Public Health Nurses” have to take measures in order to provide care to the vulnerable students (Kozhimannil et al., 2015).

Interviewee	Questions	Reason for question
Principle	How many cases of STDs have been noticed in your school?	To know the number of students who needs treatment
Principle	What can be the probable cause of STDs in your school?	To get an idea of the reason which can help in diagnosis
Principle	Frequency of the STDs cases in single parenthood	To identify one of the probable cause of STDs
Principle	What is the probable age range of the STDs cases?	The age range knowledge can help to understand the psychological factors associated with the problem
Principle	Exposure to sex education in school	To know whether the school has already taken any attempt as a measure or not
Principle	Opinion about sex education in the school	To understand that a motive and future plans of the school
Principle	Views on using protection during sex	This can help in understanding whether the teachers are themselves aware of the consequences of STDs or not

The interview was conducted in the “St. Paul Public School District” and the interview was taken on the Principal of the school named Ms. A. X. She was the Principal of the school for the last ten years. She possesses a post graduate degree in the field of English language and also a trained professional degree in her field. She has almost fifteen years of experience as a teacher and twelve years as a principal.

Since Ms. A.X. was attached to the institution for the last one decade, she was aware of all the incidence and information regarding the school and its students. She being the Principal of the school is accessible to all the necessary documents and reports regarding the students. Moreover, her experience in has helped her to develop ideas and assumptions on children. The objective of interviewing her was that being an experienced person in the educational field and achieving the highest position in the Institute; she would be the best person to understand the issue and also reflect the student psychology (Collins, 2013).

The community, as well as the group, selected both belongs to the Ramsey community, thus living a scope of similarity in the results observed. The observation noted shows that the community, as well as the group both, has experienced an increased rate of STDs. The reasons noted was a mixture of the racial groups living together. The age range for STDs in both has been identified as fifteen to twenty years. The single parenthood leads to unwanted sex was identified as a significant cause. Moreover, unwanted sex without protection was recognized as the most significant reason for transmission of STDs (Sander & Haight, 2012).

The new perspective that came out of the interview was that “single parenthood” is a major reason of the STDs. According to the Principal interviewed single parents cannot provide time to their children. Therefore, discussion relating safe sex cannot happen between the parent and the child. Moreover, the adolescent period is a unique phase in a human beings life which experiences the fluctuations in hormonal secretion. This leads to making certain wrong decisions. Parents’ guidance and teaching are very important to avoid STDs in the teenagers (Moorhead, 2013).

Questionnaire

The 2014 “Surveillance data indicates” a total of 1977, juvenile adults and teenagers between of “15 – 24” years of age in “Ramsey County” reported fresh cases of “sexually transmitted infections.”  There is a precise alarm related to a 6% augment on the whole of fresh cases informed specifically “Chlamydia.”  “Surveillance reports” a 11% amplify in stated cases amid males and 4% in females, “women (504 per 100,000”, Blacks (1,587 per 100,000), and 20-24 year-olds (2,244 per 100,000).  Data does not prove sexual predilection or well-designed immune rank of the reporting inhabitants. The main causative factor is mistreated or abandonment of contraceptives throughout sexual contact consequential in a swap of bodily fluids.  “Chlamydia” is a bacterial antigen that enters into bodily fluids and is simply passed between associates due slight or unrecognized symptoms (Carter et al., 2014).

According to the recent statistics, the Ramsey County is experiencing an elevation in the number of STDs due to various factors. The factors are a mixed pool of races in the community, single parenthood, etc. Moreover as per the interview intervention program or health awareness program have not been implemented in schools and colleges yet. This needs to be checked.

“The goal of the community health plan is to reduce the risk for sexually transmitted diseases among teenagers and young adults by 50% by the years 2020. According to the Healthy People 2020 website, STD prevention is an essential primary care strategy for improving reproductive health (Ignatavicius & Workman, 2015).

Health plan for the community should be slightly different from that of the whole community since the school consists of a small pool whereas the community consists of a larger section of the population. The objective of the group health plan should involve an increase in using protections to have safe sex, alarming the consequences of STDs and decrease in the number of STDs cases in teenagers by the end of the year.

As discussed by Dittus et al. (2014), “Despite their burdens, costs, and complications, and the fact that they are largely preventable, STDs remain a significant public health problem in the United States. This problem is largely unrecognized by the public, policymakers, and health care professionals. STDs cause much harmful, often irreversible, and costly clinical complications, such as Reproductive health problems, fetal and prenatal health problems, Cancer, and facilitation of the sexual transmission of HIV infection.”Untreated STDs can lead to serious long-term health consequences, especially for adolescent girls and young women. CDC estimates that undiagnosed and untreated STDs cause at least 24,000 women in the United States each year to become infertile.”

The intervention plan will involve the employment of the teen students in alarming, teaching and screening, more number of intervention programs should be organized in educational institutes and “extend STD prevention, testing, and treatment to newly arrested young offenders” (Dittus et al. 2014).

References:

Anderson, D., Matlock, J., Mosser, K., & Singhathip, M. (2014). Ramsey County: Building a 21st Century Continuum of Services for At-Risk Youth(Doctoral dissertation, Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs).

Carter Jr, J. W., Hart-Cooper, G. D., Butler, M. O., Workowski, K. A., & Hoover, K. W. (2014). Provider barriers prevent recommended sexually transmitted disease screening of HIV-infected men who have sex with men.Sexually transmitted diseases, 41(2), 137-142.

Collins, A. M. (2013). Nurse Develops Runaway Intervention Program. AJN The American Journal of Nursing, 113(11), 56-58.

Dittus, P. J., De Rosa, C. J., Jeffries, R. A., Afifi, A. A., Cumberland, W. G., Chung, E. Q., … & Ethier, K. A. (2014). The Project Connect Health Systems intervention: linking sexually experienced youth to sexual and reproductive health care. Journal of Adolescent Health, 55(4), 528-534.

Guthmann, J. H. (2015). Ramsey County Mental Health Court: Working with Community Partners to Improve the Lives of Mentally Ill Defendants, Reduce Recidivism, and Enhance Public Safety. Wm. Mitchell L. Rev., 41, 948.

Ignatavicius, D. D., & Workman, M. L. (2015). Medical-surgical nursing: Patient-centered collaborative care. Elsevier Health Sciences.

Kenyon, C., Banerjee, E., Sweet, K., Miller, C., & Ehresmann, K. (2014). Assessing the impact of a pertussis active surveillance program on provider testing behavior, Minnesota 2005–2009. American journal of public health,104(4), e34-e39.

Kozhimannil, K. B., Enns, E., Blauer-Peterson, C., Farris, J., Kahn, J., & Kulasingam, S. (2015). Behavioral and Community Correlates of Adolescent Pregnancy and Chlamydia Rates in Rural Counties in Minnesota. Journal of community health, 40(3), 493-500.

Meredith, T. (2014). Ramsey County Proxy Tool Norming & Validation Results (Minnesota).

Moorhead, S. (2013). Nursing Outcomes Classification (NOC), Measurement of Health Outcomes, 5: Nursing Outcomes Classification (NOC). Elsevier Health Sciences.

Ramsey-Musolf, D. (2015). Housing Element Law: Tables, Figures, Maps, Data.

Sander, H. A., & Haight, R. G. (2012). Estimating the economic value of cultural ecosystem services in an urbanizing area using hedonic pricing.Journal of environmental management, 113, 194-205.