The Healthy People Project
The Healthy People project is a federal government endeavor that has for over three decades developed a variety of goals to help monitor progress made towards making America as a nation healthier. It is based on numerous decade long aims for improving the health status of all Americans. The role of the nursing profession (which focuses on health promotion, disease prevention, and patient care, as well as advocacy and education among families, patients, and the general public) in helping to meet the Healthy People 2020 goal of Immunizations and Infectious Diseases is discussed in this essay (using a cross-section of action plans).
Nursing Profession and Advocacy for Health
According to Hesse et al. (2014), nursing as a profession is important in the advocacy for, and subsequent promotion of health among communities. To this effect therefore, the profession of nursing could help the US meet the Immunization and Infectious Disease goals and objectives of the Healthy People 2020 initiatives. That is especially true as concerns the case of action plans 27 and 33 of the Immunization and Infectious Diseases goals of the Healthy People 2020 initiatives which are founded, respectively, on the increasing of the population of individuals with the knowledge of their Hepatitis C infection status, and the adult population with TB that has been tested for HIV (Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, 2016). In so far as these two action plans of the Immunization and Infectious Disease goal are concerned, nurses would form a core part of the advocacy for promotion of health among communities by ensuring that the nation moves closer to fulfilling the aforementioned action plans, and improving its overall health outlook.
Role of Nurses in Vaccination and Disease Prevention
Nurses, as called upon by their profession to promote health among communities, are an important part of the action plans 7 and 2 of the Immunization and Infectious Disease goals of the Healthy People 2020 initiative which seek to, respectively, achieve effective vaccination coverage in the case of universally recommended vaccines (especially among children) as well as maintain such vaccination coverage, and reduce the early onset of streptococcal diseases that are classified under group B (Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, 2016). Concerning these action plans, nursing would help to promote health by reducing incidences of deaths from vaccine-preventable ailments in US communities among children while also helping increase the overall quality of health by delaying the onset of the group B streptococcal infections as Bolin et al. (2015) supposes.
Nursing as a Patient Caring Profession
In addition to the role of nurses as advocates of health promotion, the profession also calls its members to care for patients and improve the quality of lives in the process. Concerning this role of nursing, the action plans 29 and 30 which seek to (respectively) reduce tuberculosis and increase the rate of completion of treatment by TB patients eligible for therapy completion, would be achieved and hence contribute towards the meeting of the Healthy People 2020 goals. Further, nurses as caregivers would be instrumental in meeting the twenty third and twenty fifth action plans of the Immunization and Infectious Diseases goals of the Healthy People 2020 initiative which seek to reduce Hepatitis A and B respectively (Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, 2016).
Conclusion
Essentially, the nursing profession is tasked with the offering of care to patients, promotion of health and collaborating with other healthcare stakeholders to prevent diseases. Relying on these functions, the profession would therefore play a vital role in the achievement of the Immunization and Infectious Diseases goal of the Healthy People 2020 initiative.
References
Bolin, J. N., Bellamy, G. R., Ferdinand, A. O., Vuong, A. M., Kash, B. A., Schulze, A., & Helduser, J. W. (2015). Rural Healthy People 2020: New Decade, Same Challenges. The Journal of Rural Health, 31(3), 326-333.
Hesse, B. W., Gaysynsky, A., Ottenbacher, A., Moser, R. P., Blake, K. D., Chou, W. Y. S., ... & Beckjord, E. (2014). Meeting the Healthy People 2020 Goals: Using the Health Information National Trends Survey to Monitor Progress on Health Communication Objectives. Journal of Health Communication, 19(12), 1497-1509.
Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. (2016). Healthy People 2020: Immunization and Infectious Diseases. 2010. Washington, DC (https://www. healthypeople. gov/2020/topics-objectives/topic/immunization-and-infectious-diseases/objectives# 10676.
