Application of Epidemiology in Community Health Nursing

This article discusses the application of epidemiology in community health nursing and strategies to fight vitamin D deficiency in children. It covers nursing practices, primary health care principles, health promotion strategies, epidemiology concepts, and community health knowledge and theory. The article also includes research questions, a conclusion, and references.

Running Head: Community Health Nursing
APPLICATION OF EPIDEMOLOGY IN COMMUNITY HEALTH NURSING
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Epidemiology 2
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Research Questions......................................................................................................................3
Nursing practices while working for individual, family, group, community, population, and
system..............................................................................................................................................3
Primary health care principles.....................................................................................................3
Health promotion strategies.........................................................................................................5
Epidemiology Concepts...............................................................................................................6
Community Health knowledge and theory......................................................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................9
References......................................................................................................................................10

Epidemiology 3
Introduction
The research rationale will focus on identifying the key care principles for children who
suffer from vitamin D deficiency. Further, it will determine the strategies for everyone to obtain
as an individual or community to fight the issue. The research even will outline the
epidemiological concepts to offer better insight into the nursing practices to obtain for their job
role.
Research Questions
1. What are the causes of Vitamin D deficiency for the children?
2. How does the deficiency can be improved?
Nursing practices while working for individual, family, group, community,
population, and system
Primary health care principles
Vitamin D deficiency is a big factor for the children as it weakens their muscle and
makes them thinner than the usual. Thereby certain basic care principles can be obtained to avoid
such issues:
Proper diet – the children need to maintain a proper diet, which can offer them adequate vitamin
to remove the deficiency. The mother and the families need to take special care with a concern
for the nutritional level of the children. Further, the supplement can even be offered to the
children according to the situation (Kiely & Cashman, 2015). For example, a child can be
noticed with the deficiency of calcium them calcium tablets need to be given to the child.

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Sunlight consumption – sunlight consumption can be a good policy for children to fight with
the issue like vitamin D deficiency. Children naturally stay with the exposed body and the
exposed body with the help of sun rays can produce vitamin D with a great amount which can be
helpful for vitamin D deficiency (LeBlanc, Zakher, Daeges, Pappas & Chou, 2015). The children
who do not get scope for sunlight consumption in certain countries, are more prone to the skin
diseases as fungus, eruption is common for them.
Proper body weight – for the basic care principle it is even important to look after the
bodyweight of children. The children need to practice some physical activities to maintain a
healthy balance of their body weight (Bischoff-Ferrari et al., 2016). Under weight children often
are being diagnosed as result of malnutrition due to the economical structure of the family and
society.
Check up, and consultancy – the family, especially mother of a child needs to be very careful
about any small changes in the child, and this finding needs to be followed by the checkup and
consultancy with the doctor. Often it can be seen that in the remote areas mother of the child is
not educated and thus unaware of the symptoms of disease and thus do not go for a check up,
which is much important for the child.
Pollution-free environment – the community needs to take steps to offer the children of the
society a pollution-free environment that will further help them to be enriched with vitamin D. In
this concern the government or the administrative system needs to share enough awareness in the
communities to live in the pollution-free environment. The government even needs to obtain
some necessary steps for this.
Practicing good habits through the proper group – children try to imitate everyone. For
outdoor activities, if they will be associated with a positive group, they will eventually reject

Epidemiology 5
their bad habits acquiring good food habits. This transformation will help them to fight with the
issue in two ways – practicing better food habit and exposed body in outdoor, acquiring enough
sunlight initiates vitamin D (Dayal, 2016).
Health promotion strategies
Health promotion strategies had been included as a practical factor to promote the health
factor of the children. The several principals comprised positive health perspectives,
involvement, and action competence. To enroll effective principals, the strategies had to be
demonstrated. The health care centre plays the crucial role in availing the health promotion in
community. The health promotion strategies included the lifestyle, behavioural, socio-
environmental, and the prominent medication. The apprehensive inflation of these three
approach lead to demonstrate the health promotion practices. In other hand the negativity in
these approach can be harmful for health promotion in community. Rather than that, the strategy
had been demonstrated in major three categories, and those are advocacy, mediating and
enabling (Bloomquist, Kryzanowski & Dunn-Pierce, 2019). Advocacy had been taken as the
enhanced strategy to influence the health promotional factors. It had been designed as the
foremost strategy as it aid to achieve social action. Nurses have significant efficacy in improving
the caring health strategies through implementing advocacy. They are the responsible personnel
for influencing the caring health strategies in society. Deficiency of Vitamin D had been
considered as the major issue to affect the health condition of the patient (Ul Ashraf, 2019). Thus
the nurses had to implement the foremost strategy to influence the health caring process.
Secondly, Mediation is another foremost approach to demonstrate the caring strategy. It had been
added as the prominent strategy in health promotional factors as it had been contributed as the
critical element to produce the efforts to promote the health condition (Kaldy,

Epidemiology 6
2015).Additionally, the enabling also had been considered as active factors to demonstrate health
promotion. At this moment, enabling had been taken as the action to empower the individuals to
prevent health issues. These several strategies had been inaugurated as the prominent strategies
to enhance the health caring process.
Epidemiology Concepts
The epidemiology had been included as the main perspective in intensifying the value of
health issues. It comprised the determination of the primary cause of the disease. Hence it had
been formulated as the main perspective to influence the health promotional factors. The cause
of the lack of vitamin D had to be identified (Baybutt, 2018). The concepts are the first approach
to deduce the risk factors of the patient. Hence it also had been observed, lack of vitamin D lead
to reduce the bone density (Okşul, 2018). Thus the nurses had to implement the foremost
strategy to influence the health caring process. The several principals comprised positive health
perspectives, involvement, and action competence. Additionally, it had been considered as
equally useful for the children as it may cause of rickets. Hence some of the risk factors
comprised decreasing blood levels. Therefore the epidemiology concepts had to be generated to
promote the health caring process and to prevent the patient from lack of vitamin D. the
prominent perspectives of the epidemiology prevails the treatment process and aid to avoid the
health caring process.
Additionally, epidemiology concepts are the significant concepts for the health
professionals and nurses to promote the treatment process and to reduce the risk factors. The
community health factors inaugurated to avail the diagnosis process of the nurses. Apart from
that, it also had been involved as the epidemiology perspectives which enhance the working

Epidemiology 7
process. Epidemiology concepts aggregated the nursing diagnosis process. Since, the positive
epidemiology had to be recognized to create impact on the nursing diagnosis. The negativity on
epidemiology concepts lead to decrease the value of nursing diagnosis. Furthermore, the
epidemiology methods had been determined as the practical techniques assist in determining the
impactful hazards of the disease (Galesanu, Grozavu & Alexandru, 2015). Hence the prominent
epidemiology prevailed to develop the controlling process. Moreover, it also enables the nurses
to implicate the effective strategies of health promotion to prevent patient.
Community Health knowledge and theory
The predominant causes the deficiency of vitamin D is the lack of vitamin D in the diet of
the patient. Besides, children who are less exposed to the sun are supposed to face vitamin D
deficiency. It is also a common fact that proper caring and the nursing of the patient will surely
help the person to recover this issue of vitamin D deficiency. As a nurse based on the common
standard practices of the regulated members and the Canadian Health Nursing professionals, and
the major standard of practices, the nurse first creates awareness regarding the disease to the
individual patient ("IMPROVED OSTEOPOROSIS SELF-EFFICACY IMPROVES EXERCISE
AND DIETARY INTAKE OF CALCIUM AND VITAMIN D", 2016). The patient and the
family, as well as other members of the community, must at first ensure that the people are well
educated about the disease and its consequences. This will reduce the panic that people may
experience. As a nurse, it is the responsibility of her profession to ensuring the amount of
deficiency that the person is having. It is important to note the major causes of the disease. The
nurse must chart detail of the food habits and other habits of the patient along with the lifestyle
of the patient (Accortt, Mirocha, Dunkel Schetter & Hobel, 2017). This will enable the nurse to

Epidemiology 8
understand the kind and the source of deficiency that the person is having. The treatment requires
proper supplementation of Vitamin D in the diet of the patient depending on the type and the
amount of deficiency that the person is facing. Followed by identification of the type of disease,
the person is orally administered the supplements (Mata-McMahon, Haslip & Schein, 2018). The
nurse must keep an account of the changes in the symptom and if the person is improving or not.
Also, food rich in vitamin D must be given to the patient. Besides, it is to be kept in mind
that the person must require to feel that he is improving (Baird et al., 2017). The nurse must also
ensure that the person is exposed to adequate sunlight, as this will help to prevent the deficiency
and enable the body to produce the required amount of Vitamin D. The patient must spend an
adequate amount of time outdoor, as this will to generate the vitamin D in the body. The duty of
the nurse is to ensure that the person is healing and feeling better after taking the supplements.
Time to time report and testing of the blood is mandatory to check if the person is curing with
the administered doses or not (Rockwell, Kraak, Hulver & Epling, 2018).

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Conclusion
The vitamin D deficiency in children and adults is one of the major issues that are
prevalent in modern society. It is mainly affecting the bones and the teeth of the people. The
major causes of the deficiency of vitamin D are lack of proper diet, and lack of proper vitamin D
supplements in the diet is a major cause of vitamin D deficiency in adults as well as children.
However, it is an evident fact that proper nursing and care strategies of the patient by the family
members and the hospital and nurse will help the patient to overcome this deficiency disease.

Epidemiology 10
References
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and Postpartum Multi-Systemic Dysregulation: Adding Vitamin D Deficiency to the
Allostatic Load Index. Maternal And Child Health Journal, 21(3), 398-406. doi:
10.1007/s10995-016-2226-3
Baird, J., Jacob, C., Barker, M., Fall, C., Hanson, M., & Harvey, N. et al. (2017). Developmental
Origins of Health and Disease: A Lifecourse Approach to the Prevention of Non-
Communicable Diseases. Healthcare, 5(1), 14. doi: 10.3390/healthcare5010014
Baybutt, P. (2018). On the completeness of scenario identification in process hazard analysis
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Bischoff-Ferrari, H., Dawson-Hughes, B., Orav, E., Staehelin, H., Meyer, O., & Theiler, R. et al.
(2016). Monthly High-Dose Vitamin D Treatment for the Prevention of Functional
Decline. JAMA Internal Medicine, 176(2), 175. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2015.7148
Bloomquist, C., Kryzanowski, J., & Dunn-Pierce, T. (2019). Applying quality improvement
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doi: 10.1093/heapro/daz017
Dayal, D. (2016). It’s high time to revise Indian guidelines on vitamin D supplementation in
children. Journal Of Pediatric Endocrinology And Metabolism, 29(4). doi: 10.1515/jpem-
2015-0374

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Galesanu, C., Grozavu, I., & Alexandru, F. (2015). Vitamin D supplementation can improve
velocity of growth in children with vitamin D deficiency which are in treatment with
RHGH for growth hormone deficiency. Bone Abstracts. doi: 10.1530/boneabs.4.p9
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