When seeking to lessen behavioral risk factors in different populations, one of the greatest challenges is addressing the systemic issues within the population that enable the risky behavior to occur in the first place. Consider the health risks of school-age children not being immunized or drug users sharing needles. As Dr. Beilenson discussed in the Week 4 media program, these risky behaviors led to increases in individual and population health problems. Thus, when planning health prevention programs, it is important to consider how to effectively address risky behaviors at both the individual and the population level.

The Discussion this week focuses on the use of the Population-Based Intervention Model outlined in the course text Health Care Delivery in the United States, as well as how this model can be applied to strengthen advocacy programs.

To prepare:

• Select one of the behavioral risk factors from the Healthy Population 2010 Objectives (listed in Table 7.1 on p. 122 of the course text) that is of interest to you.
• Using the Walden Library and other credible websites, research how this risk factor is affecting your community or state.

With your selected risk factor in mind, review the information on the Population-Based Intervention Model on pp. 132-137 in the course text, Health Care Delivery in the United States. In particular, focus on the concept of downstream, midstream, and upstream interventions. Consider at least one intervention that could be put into place at each stage.

Solution:

Week 5 Discussion: Addressing Behavioral Risk Factors

The selected behavioral risk factor is cigarette smoking. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2011), about 43.8 million adults in the United States (U.S) are cigarette smokers. May and Previte (2016) recognize cigarette smoking as one of the most preventable diseases and mortality causing behavioral risk factor. Smoking cigarette not only affects the health of the direct smokers but also the community at large leading to the increased financial burden on the community. According to May and Previte (2016), close to $96 billion and $97 billion shillings is lost on healthcare costs and productivity costs respectively, due to tobacco smoking. Smoking tobacco leads to various health conditions including stroke, cancers, peripheral vascular disease, heart disease, and hypertension, just to mention a few. Many people continue to smoke tobacco despite the fact that they are aware that it is harmful to their health and it increased the risk of developing health conditions. As such, interventions ought to be developed and implemented to address tobacco smoking and improve tobacco use associated statistics. Applying the Population-Based Intervention Model, downstream, midstream, and upstream interventions can be incorporated to facilitate in enhancing public health in regards to cigarette smoking. As defined by Haas et al. (2015), downstream interventions include entails approaches for disease prevention and management on an individual level……..Please click the icon below to purchase full solution at $5