Community Health and Disease Prevention

Running head: COMMUNITY HEALTH AND DISEASE PREVENTION
COMMUNITY HEALTH AND DISEASE PREVENTION
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

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Introduction:
Health program is demarcated as the process of enhancing the heath population of a
group. Health program helps the individual background who are from different cultural
background to enhance the health outcomes. The vulnerable population of the community have
poor access to the health care facilities and hence have low life expectancy rate and increased
death rate. To reduce the death rate of the public, different health program are organized by the
governing health care authorities (Kokkinen et al., 2017). The chosen health issue in the essay is
the dengue fever among the aboriginal population, who are the most vulnerable population of the
Australia. This essay focusses on the laverack’s ladder of the community based interaction to
discuss the key strategies that can be used in the community engagement. Apart from these, the
discussion of the essay revolves around the strategy which help to address the chosen health
concern of the community population. The essay aims to discuss the core domains of the
capacity building that is recognized by liberato et al, (2011). This core domains care the
community ownership and the empowerment program of the prevention program for the dengue
fever. The essay also discusses five approaches and module of the health promotion program
which aids to educate or motivate the community population. Along with that advantages and
disadvantages of the approaches are also discussed.
Chosen population:
The chosen community population of the essay is the aboriginal population. According to
the AIHW (2019), it is one of the most vulnerable population of the Australia. The life
expectancy rate of the Indigenous Australians is less than that of the non- Indigenous
Australians. The death rate of the Indigenous Australians is also more as associated to the non-
indigenous Australians. For the Aborginal and the Torres Strait Islander population, the life

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expectancy rate is approx. 10 years lesser than that of the non- Indigenous Australians. The
increasing death rate is due to the poor access of the health care facilities among the community
population. Dengue outbreak has been observed among the Indigenous Australians in the year
2016. Out of the total cases of illness, 64% of the cases were reported for the dengue fever
among the aboriginal population (Hotez, 2014). By considering the vulnerability of the
population, this population is chosen for the essay.
Dengue fever:
Dengue fever is the mosquito-borne disease. It is a tropical disease which is instigated by
the dengue virus. In Australia, the outbreak of dengue has been observed which caused a huge
number of death in the individual. The individuals suffering from dengue suffers from high
fever, vomiting, joint and muscle pain, headache and skin rashes (Cardoso et al., 2015). It is
extremely important to treat the individual suffering from dengue in the limited time. If proper
treatment is not provided, it can lead to death. Hence, to reduce the adverse health effect in the
indigenous population, prevention strategy should be followed. To create awareness regarding
the prevention strategy among the indigenous population different health programs are analysed.
Health program:
Health programs are the programs initiated by the healthcare authorities to enhance the
health outcomes of the community population. The health programs helps in creating awareness
regarding the prevention strategy of the health concern. It also helps in educating and motivating
the individuals to adapt those strategy to modify their life style (Ginter et al., 2018). To enhance
the health outcome of the indigenous population it is important to increase the community

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engagement of the population which can be achieved by key strategy of the laverack’s ladder
model (Laverack et al., 2015).
Laverack’s ladder model:
Laverack’s ladder model of the community interaction is a model which assists the
community population to enhance their health outcomes and also assist in empowering the
community population with its characteristics which are community readiness, community
participation, community engagement, community organization, community development,
community capacity, community action and community empowerment (Green & Haines, 2015).
Strategies to enhance community engagement:
Community engagement is extremely important for the efficient implication of the health
programs. Less engagement of community leads to poor outcome of the health program. Hence,
in order to increase the engagement of the community members, different key strategy of the
lavercak’s ladder model is applied.
Communication along with listening:
Communication with the community population is considered as one of the most
effective method to enhance the community engagement. With the help of effective
communication, awareness regarding the adverse health outcomes due to the dengue fever
should be created (Jin et al., 2019). The health care providers who are involved in the health
programs should also listen to the community member regarding their needs and preferences.
Participation: