Mental Health and Substance Abuse: Addressing Community Health Needs in Wake County - Essay Sample

Introduction

Mental Health and substance abuse are among the community health needs in Wake County. According to Wake County 2019 Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA), the county performed more than 5% poorly than applicable benchmarks on poor mental health. Even though mental health and substance abuse are regarded as stigmatized topics of discussion, the Wake community's need for substance abuse and mental health resources have improved. Because most people recognize that they affect not only individuals but also family, friends, and the community. In Wake County, the mental health prevalence has been on the rise, hence the notion that related levels of resources to curb the problem have not been expanding to address the need, which has raised the concern (Rodriguez, 2019). In particular, crisscrossing through the county and randomly asking people to identify the most community need, most individuals frequently identified mental health and substance abuse.

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Additionally, most people seem to believe and have an understanding that there is an increase in inappropriate prescription drug use and heroin abuse within the county. Most often, the residents responded that there have no improvements made in substance abuse and mental health; the majority point out that substance abuse and mental health are worse than three years earlier. Further, most key leaders did not think that mental health and substance abuse have improved since 2013 (Wake County CHNA, 2019). As such, the availability of programs and facilities is imperative for community health needs.

Goals and Objectives

Goal

To combat drug abuse and improve the mental health of Wake residents.

Objectives

Aims at reducing heroin and inappropriate prescriptions drugs use, overdose, use disorder, and associated health outcomes through the implementation of high-quality prevention based on evidence, treatment, and recovery support services.

Interventions

Early childhood home visitation. Nurses, social workers, community peers, and Paraprofessionals should visit children and parents in their homes; these programs help prevent violence. Some of the visits by health officers should happen during the child's first two years of life. This helps in promoting mental wellbeing in the community.

Teen Intervene. There should be an early intervention program for 12-19 years of teens who exhibit signs of involvement in alcohol and drug abuse. The intervention targets reducing and eventually eradicate substance abuse.

Nurse's Role

In implementing these interventions, the nurse as a change agent plays a critical role. First, in the early childhood home visitation, the nurse should visit children and parents in their homes to observe signs of violence in the family against a family member or the child. In doing this, the nurse ensures that the child grows in a non-violent environment, which does not impact negatively on their cognitive development. Thus, this early intervention by the nurses helps in reducing mental health problems.

Second, the nurse practitioner has a vital role in teen intervention. The nurse integrates stages of change theory, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and motivational enhancement in order to eradicate the teen's drug abuse.

Evaluate the Interventions

People with drug abuse will demonstrate independence in self-care activities, manage chronic illnesses effectively, if any, and avoid the use of drugs or other precipitating factors. Further, drug addicts will follow through discharge plans regarding support groups and employment. Lastly, mental health cases will significantly decrease in five years.

Health Care Access and Utilization

In Wake County, health care access and utilization is still a problem today despite a consensus among the critical respondents that there has been a little improvement. It is among the top three chosen areas of wake community issues alongside substance and drug abuse, and poverty and unemployment (CHNA 2019). Health access includes items or areas that present an obstacle to residents in getting the care they require (Lindsay et al. 2016). Wake county's system complexity contributes to the problem because many residents are unable to access resources or are unaware of the available support provide the confusion concerning system navigation. Most residents believe that health access in wake country is accessible mainly due to being costly, limited availability of appointment, inconvenient hours of operation, and long queuing time. The residents cited primary care and preventive healthcare access encompassing dental care as one of the key priority needs of the country.

The residents identified access to health services as the second highest mean score from the residents and the third-highest average score from the steering committee (Wake County (CHNA, 2019). Issues in health care access are attributed to the location of provider offices, transportation options, working hours, and lack of knowledge of available resources. Thus, residents view access to care as limited, which is as a result of a lack of facilities and professionals in the county.

Goals and Objectives

Goal

Improve Access to Quality Health Services. Wake County should design initiatives and programs to enhance health equity, improve quality and range of health services, raises the number of health access points, and safeguard the wellbeing and health of all residents, including the vulnerable people in the community.

Objectives

• Enhance health care services, infrastructure, and systems capacity.
• Enhance the effectiveness and quality of health care systems and services
• Link patients with preventive and primary care services

Goal

Promote a health care team able to address the emerging and current needs of the residents

Objectives

• Advance the competences of the workforce through expanding the types and numbers of technical and training assistance opportunities educating providers and students.
• Enhance the diversity and distribution of the workforce through addressing workers shortages by aligning training and recruitment of the workforce to serve in areas of greatest needs.

Interventions

Increase the health care infrastructure in the county. This will help all the residents to access health care more quickly.

The county should aim at training the healthcare workforce in addressing emerging and current health care issues. Thus, improving their training and ensuring that they thoroughly practice their full scope of training will help in ensuring that the community receives quality health care.

Nurse's Role

In implementing this intervention, the nurses should ensure that they provide quality health care services to the community. In order to achieve this, nursing practitioners should improve their competencies through training and technical assistance. Further, they should connect the patient with preventative and primary care services.

Evaluate the Interventions

The Healthcare workforce will demonstrate increased distribution and diversity. They will also undergo training to enhance their competencies. The community would be able to access medical treatment at closer proximity from where they live. Besides, the nurses should practice at the full level of their scope, and the residents should show that they can access affordable and fast quality healthcare services.

Poverty and Unemployment

I noted that poverty and lack of employment opportunities as a concern in wake county. Most residents pointed out that lack of economic and employment opportunities as an issue as well as being a key factor influencing community health. A focus group participants identified both underemployment and unemployment as problems facing health care provision and access in Wake County (Rodriguez, 2019). Further, Wake County performed poorly compared to other counties on matters of the employment rate of residents over the age of 16 (Wake County CHNA, 2019). Thus, most residents believe that poverty and unemployment are concerns that affect several other elements of living healthy such as access to healthcare services, the ability to pay for health insurance, and nutrition. Residents from the East Central zone ranked poverty and unemployment as the primary problem in their community. According to Wake county Health Assessment (2019), the rate of unemployment has was the primary concern to the community in Wake County, while poverty ranked fourth. Today, most residents feel that the issue of poverty has worsened or stagnated overtime.

Moreover, unemployment and poverty are enhanced due to the limited opportunities for teens, immigrants, and felons ((Lindsay et al. 2016). As such, Poverty and unemployment are primary concerns to the community health needs. The unfortunate experience worse health and die younger and have limited access to social protection and health care. As such, poverty and unemployment is a central concern in Wake County.

Goals and Objectives

Goal

Reduction of unemployment levels in Wake County

Objectives

• Reduce unhealthy behaviors due to unemployment and poverty, which are associated with tobacco and alcohol consumption, diet, and exercise.
• Enhance the ability to pay for health insurance.
• Jobs for felons

Goal

• Reduce underemployment
• Ensure residents are working in jobs that fully utilize their skillsets and abilities
• Liveable wages

Interventions

Ensuring that residents are working in positions that fully use their skillsets and ensure equity in the available opportunities available to disparate populations.

Human capital development campaign to assist wake county residents achieves progress towards social and economic self-sufficiency, which ensures employment access, financial, and educational development opportunities, which helps people achieve a middle-class lifestyle.

Nurse's Role

Nurses play a crucial role in poverty and unemployment eradication and their effect on community wellbeing and health. A nurse needs to advocate for adequate welfare, social equality, disability payments, wages that people can live on, social inclusion, and affordable housing (Cutts et al. 2016). Thus, a nurse should take an advocacy role in public health policy promoting health equity and social justice, thereby supporting families at risk of a poor child or adult health outcomes.

Intervention Evaluation

The nursing practitioner will evaluate whether the government has set in place policies that support social inclusion, including liveable wage, reduction in underemployed, and unemployment rates. The residents will be able to acquire health insurance coverage. Moreover, the residents will be able to lead a middle-class life showing reduced dangerous behaviors dues to poverty, such as smoking and drinking alcohol. Further, there should be policies to ensure that felons and other groups are employed and can cater for their health insurance. Thus, improving the livelihood of the wake county residents transitions to a healthier community.

Summary

The paper has identified the three major problems that impact on the Wake County community health and wellbeing, including mental health and drug abuse, poverty and unemployment, and limited access to healthcare services. In each of the identified problems, there is a recommended intervention to improve the health of the community. For instance, to reduce mental health cases in the county, the nurses should plan home visits to families and children to ensure that they do not encounter violence, which impacts in their cognitive development. As such, this community action plan devises ways that can help improve the health outcomes of the larger society.

References

CHNA,(2019). Wake County 2019 community health needs assessment. https://www.rexhealth.com/app/files/public/139...