Successful health equity strategies must be inclusive, and focus on all marginalized and minoritized persons and their communities. Any lesser view will continue to yield a faulty health equity equation.
Building Stronger Communities Through Health Literacy: A Multi-Level Approach In today's fast-paced world, access to accurate health information is crucial for making informed decisions about our well-being. However, language barriers and limited resources can pose significant challenges for some communities, especially immigrants in rural areas. So we're committed to addressing these issues head-on with our innovative public health intervention: "Building Stronger Communities Through Health...
Community violence can lead to an increased risk of significant physical injuries, as well as mental health conditions, such as depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2022). People who experience multiple adverse childhood experiences, including exposure to violence, are more likely to have both short-term and chronic physical and mental health conditions and behavioral difficulties (CDC, 2022). Community violence can...
Hello! For my 'Building Resilience in Individuals and Communities for Public Health' Course, I was tasked with creating an intervention aimed at building resilience in a community focused on a particular critical public health issue. The issue I choose to focus on was childhood homelessness. In the United States, 2.5% of school-aged children are homeless (U.S. Department of Education, 2020). Florida is doing far worse in this health issue. Florida is ranked 40th in the country in childhood...
Based on the epidemiological data, we can see that the United States has the highest number of COVID-19 in the world, with 13,386,255 cases. Furthermore, there were 8613,630 cases and 204,873 during the pandemic, while there were a total of 1529,691 cases and 29,313 deaths in rural areas (Diego et al., 2021). If left untreated, the number of cases and death will continue to rise, especially in rural communities since they have the lowest healthcare resources. For this intervention, I...
The highest rates of suicide fatality among adolescents are among American Indian/Alaskan native (AI/AN) males and females between the ages of 15-19; however, rural northwestern Alaskan Inupiat adolescents have rates disproportionally higher than other AI/AN youth. Camp Power is an intervention designed to build resiliency and reduce suicide among Inupiat Youth. It is a 4-week summer camp program for Inupiat youth, ages 15-19 It uses cultural practices to help build resilience centered...
In the United States, breast cancer is the most diagnosed cancer after skin and is the second leading cause of cancer death in the nation (American Cancer Society, 2023). Despite the higher incidence of breast cancers amongst White women, African American women are dying at much higher rates from breast cancer. The American Cancer Society reports that Black women have a 4% lower incidence rate of breast cancer compared to White women but have a 40% higher breast cancer death rate (2022). The...
Homelessness is a public health issue, as over half a million people in the United States are unhoused on any given night and homelessness is associated with physical and mental health comorbidities (Sleet & Francescutti, 2021). The public health issue of homelessness extends to my own community of Alachua County, Florida; the most recent Point in Time Survey, conducted by the North Central Florida Alliance for the Homeless and Hungry, conducted one night in January 2018, reported 641...
Approximately 61.2 million people aged 12 and older (that’s 22% of the population!) have used an illicit drug in 2021 (HHS, 2021). In Florida, 7.87% of 12-17 year olds have reported using a drug within the last month (NCDAS, n.d.). In South Florida, specifically, there have been significant increases in opioid overdoses and heroin-related deaths (Miami Dade County, 2019 and United Way, 2018). This shows that there is a need for prevention and education programs regarding substance use for...
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, it is estimated that about 11,500 new cases of cervical cancer are diagnosed, and 4,000 women will die of cervical cancer annually. Currently 8.4 women per 100,000 in Florida will be diagnosed with cervical cancer. While these numbers represent a significant decrease in diagnosis across all ages due to HPV vaccination efforts (such as campaigns to increase screening in children) and cervical cancer screenings (for women 21 – 65), it...
Depressive disorders stand as prominent contributors to the global burden of disease, ranking among the primary causes. In adolescents, they emerge as the third most prevalent source of disability-adjusted life-years lost (Caldwell et al., 2019). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 2.7 million children aged 3-17 years were diagnosed with depression between 2016 and 2019, accounting for 4.4% of this population (CDC, 2023a). The repercussions of mental...
In the United States in 2021, 1 in 6 infants were born to a woman receiving late or no prenatal care (March of Dimes Foundation, 2022). The March of Dimes Foundation also found that on average from 2019 to 2021 9.2% of Black women received late or no prenatal care compared to 4.6% for white women. Infants born to mothers that did not receive prenatal care are three times more likely to have a low birth weight (Novoa, 2020). Low birth weight in infancy contributes to various health-related...
Substance abuse is a persistent and growing health concern in the United States, with more than 45 million Americans age 12 and older meeting the DSM-V criteria for Substance Use Disorder in 2021 (SAMHSA National Survey of Drug Use and Health, 2021). Substance abuse is particularly insidious because it affects multiple factors of a person's life - their health, financial/economic resources, emotional wellbeing, and their relationships (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2022; Daley, 2013).
Children in the juvenile justice system have greater chances of experiencing various and multiple forms of childhood trauma, and oftentimes experiences increase their risks for criminal involvement (Dierkhising et al., 2013). 90% of youth in the juvenile justice system have had exposure to traumatic events (Dierkhising et al., 2013). Children of color are overrepresented in the juvenile justice system and are more likely to be detained and committed than their non-Hispanic white counterparts...
Due to historical disadvantages, the Black community has long been marginalized and stereotyped in the media. This lack of representation and negative portrayals have perpetuated biases and hindered the progress of the community (Bleich et al., 2019). However, a rising trend towards inclusivity and representation has sparked the need for a multi-level resilience-building intervention. This intervention aims to promote positive narratives and accurate depictions of the Black community,...