Disease Control And Prevention Essay

Understanding family structure and style is essential to patient and family care. Conducting a family interview and needs assessment gathers information to identify strengths, as well as potential barriers to health. This information ultimately helps develop family-centered strategies for support and guidance.Disease Control And Prevention Essay

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This family health assessment is a two-part assignment. The information you gather in this initial assignment will be utilized for the second assignment in Topic 3.

Develop an interview questionnaire to be used in a family-focused functional assessment. The questionnaire must include three open-ended, family-focused questions to assess functional health patterns for each of the following:

Values/Health Perception
Nutrition
Sleep/Rest
Elimination
Activity/Exercise
Cognitive
Sensory-Perception
Self-Perception
Role Relationship
Sexuality
Coping
Select a family, other than your own, and seek permission from the family to conduct an interview. Utilize the interview questions complied in your interview questionnaire to conduct a family-focused functional assessment. Document the responses as you conduct the interview.Disease Control And Prevention Essay

Upon completion of the interview, write a 750-1,000-word paper. Analyze your assessment findings. Submit your questionnaire as an appendix with your assignment.

Include the following in your paper:

Describe the family structure. Include individuals and any relevant attributes defining the family composition, race/ethnicity, social class, spirituality, and environment.
Summarize the overall health behaviors of the family. Describe the current health of the family.
Based on your findings, describe at least two of the functional health pattern strengths noted in the findings. Discuss three areas in which health problems or barriers to health were identified.
Describe how family systems theory can be applied to solicit changes in family members that, in turn, initiate positive changes to the overall family functions over time.
Cite at least three peer-reviewed or scholarly sources to complete this assignment. Sources should be published within the last 5 years and appropriate for the assignment criteria.Disease Control And Prevention Essay

Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center. An abstract is not required.

This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.

You are required to submit this assignment to LopesWrite. Please refer to the directions in the Student Success Center.

Findings by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention indicate that sickness creates a distressful experience for families and can generally lead to suffering and poor health. Therefore, for the purposes of adequately addressing the needs of individuals and families in general, intervention models were developed. These models can easily be applied in clinical scenarios. One of the most recognized models is that of the Family-focused functional assessment. This model centers on the family and makes use of Gordon’s typology functional health pattern to address a family’s health needs.
Nurses are actively engaged in collecting, analyzing and documenting data during the process of conducting a family health assessment. Assessments require them to utilize their background knowledge and skills in critical thinking to be able to establish a decision making framework for making care plans. In most cases, care plans are incorporated with evidence-based knowledge for optimal health outcomes. This paper describes a family health assessment of a close friend. Open-ended questions were used to assess the family’s functional health pattern under eleven groups. The family’s structure, overall health behaviors and strengths noted in the functional health pattern will be described. A description on how family systems theory can be applied to influence positive change among family members over time will also be provided.Disease Control And Prevention Essay
Description of the Family Structure
This family is made up of both nuclear and extended members. The overall structure is determined by rules, roles, power and hierarchy. Being an entirely African American race the family strictly observes the traditions, rules and culture of African Americans especially in regards to religion, marriage and religion. The family comprises of a father as the head, a mother, two children, a niece and a nephew. The father and mother are the major income earners, are at the topmost of the family’s hierarchy and possess power. This family structure not only encourages respect but also strong values amongst the family members.
Spirituality has also been brought out as having a vital role in the lives of this African American family. More particularly, African Americans rely on religion to make decisions regarding life and death. They are also active members of church events and activities of the Baptist church. This commitment can also be observed from the leadership roles assumed by every family member in: Bible classes, choir and fellowships. Based on their levels of commitment, it can easily be concluded that spirituality has played a huge role in creating a strong bond in this family.
Overall Health Behaviors of the Family and Current Health of the Family
Based on the findings of each category, the family’s health behaviors can generally be described as optimal. Health is maintained through open lines of communication with an aim of establishing long term interactions by acknowledging each person’s abilities. The family also has an impressive sleeping pattern as characterized by 9.00pm for bedtime and 5.00am for waking up and the progressive relaxation technique. Good sleep patterns have been proven to boost productivity in performing activities of daily life, learning and memory among both adults and children (Chaput, 2014). It is also commendable that the patterns of elimination are as recommended with no reported cases of diarrhoea, constipation, dysuria or hematuria. The high rates of water intake promote frequent micturation. Research indicates that this helps to reduce the risks of UTIs and is a potentially good sign of optimal kidney function in otherwise healthy individuals. However, the family also has several barriers to health in terms of role relationships, nutrition and sexuality. However, based on the relationship patterns and attitude of every family member, these issues can easily be addressed.
Functional Health Pattern Strengths, Health Problems/Barriers Noted
A major functional health pattern strength noted in the findings was that the family engages in daily physical activity early mornings over the weekends and in the evening on weekdays since no one is physically challenged. Some of these activities include: short distance running, jogging, rope skipping and short jumps. Physical activity has been revealed to improve the quality of life by reducing the risk of lifestyle diseases (Wu et al., 2014). Besides, good sleep and elimination patterns ensure optimal health for all family members.
It was notable that this family is at a high risk of obesity and overweight since its diets are generally low on calcium, fiber and potassium but high in fats, sodium and cholesterol. A further analysis revealed that they consume foods rich in cholesterol and fats due to the strong belief that a person requires additional weight for energy reserves that can be used during sicknesses. As explained by Wu et al. (2014), this reveals why overweight and obesity rates are significantly high in the African American culture. Disease Control And Prevention Essay
Another health problem was that of lack of information/knowledge on sexuality and poor role relationships. The family generally solves conflicts using the avoidance approach. This strategy is however not optimal since most issues are left unaddressed yet the family id characterized by long relationships term. Instead, the family needs to be taught with a lot of emphasis on accommodation and collaboration.
It should also be noted that inadequate knowledge on sexuality increases the likelihood of risky sexual behaviors among adolescents and infidelity among couples who are married. This explains why it is necessary to freely discuss about sexuality with this family as there exists a knowledge gap (Wu et al., 2014). Apart from promoting openness, this will also increase the awareness on the reproductive health needs of each family member.
How Family Systems Theory Can Be Used To Initiate Positive Change
The family systems theory lays a lot of emphasis on the interdependence of subsystems which exist within a family. Based on this theory, the family is considered to have an organized hierarchy with numerous family members and relations (Kaplan et al., 2014). It should be understood that this family is capable of both self-reorganization and self-regulation. Therefore, as it has been identified that its major stressor is that of finances since the father lacks a stale source of income, it can reorganize itself for new roles and the mother identified as the primary income source.Disease Control And Prevention Essay
Obesity and being overweight has been identified as a barrier to health. Using the family systems theory, a family-based approach can be embraced to reduce the risk of obesity through parenting styles, parenting patterns and child management that influences positive behavior change in nutrition and physical activity (Kaplan et al., 2014).Disease Control And Prevention Essay

References
Chaput, J. P. (2014). Sleep patterns, diet quality and energy balance. Physiology & behavior, 134, 86-91.
Kaplan, S. G., Arnold, E. M., Irby, M. B., Boles, K. A., & Skelton, J. A. (2014). Family systems theory and obesity treatment: applications for clinicians. ICAN: Infant, Child, & Adolescent Nutrition, 6(1), 24-29.
Wu, R. R., Himmel, T. L., Buchanan, A. H., Powell, K. P., Hauser, E. R., Ginsburg, G. S., & Orlando, L. A. (2014). Quality of family history collection with use of a patient facing family history assessment tool. BMC family practice, 15(1), 31.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted a study between 1999 and 2008 and found the percentage of students with specific learning disabilities (SLD) had increased by 5.5%. Most recent data suggests that almost 8% of students in the United States have SLD (cdc.gov). According to The National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities, this means that 1 out of every 5 people in the United States have learning disabilities (nichcy.org). According to the Council for Learning disabilities, the definition for specific learning disability is “a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself in an imperfect ability  Disease Control And Prevention Essay
Some other possible causes can come from the mother, which could be thyroid hormone disorder or medication used during pregnancy (ldaamerica.org). Use of alcohol and drugs can also affect the growth of baby’s brains. Most learning disabilities are identified in students during elementary school. There are many different ways to detect learning disabilities. Helpguide states that some of the signs and symptoms of children in preschool are problems pronouncing words, trouble finding the right words, and difficulty rhyming. They can also have trouble learning the alphabet or recognizing colors and shapes. Children ages five to nine may have trouble learning the connection between letters and sounds. They may also have difficulty blending sounds to make words or they frequently misspell words. Older students may have difficulty with reading comprehension or math skills (helpguide.org). Students with reading disabilities dislike reading and writing and try their best to avoid it. These problems should be addressed as soon as possible. When the problems are not corrected, they can get worse and lead to other problems. An example of this would be if a child in preschool is having trouble connecting sounds to letters, he will later have trouble blending sounds together. This will cause him to have problems reading words, which could affect his comprehension. It could also make it more Disease Control And Prevention Essay

Family Health Assessment Part I (1)