Health in Australia: Determinants and Impacts on Samoan Community

This report delves into the health landscape of the Samoan community in Australia, examining the various determinants of health, including environment, politics, occupation, and culture, and their combined impacts. Utilizing Gibbs's reflection cycle, the report highlights prevalent health issues such as HIV/AIDS, diabetes, cancer, and poor pregnancy outcomes, often linked to dietary habits and lifestyle changes associated with urbanization. It discusses the challenges of building trust within the community and the importance of culturally sensitive interventions, such as the Nutrition Education Program (NEP). The report also explores the role of community partnerships, the potential for expanding health services, and the need for early cancer screening and education. Additionally, it emphasizes the importance of healthcare providers working in harmony to diagnose and dispense healthcare services and the importance of addressing poor pregnancy outcomes through dietary changes, iron supplementation, and fortification. The report concludes with a call for collective responsibility and government support to improve the health of the Samoan community. This report is contributed to Desklib, a platform providing AI-based study tools for students.

Running head: HEALTH 1
HEALTH IN AUSTRALIA
Name:
Institution:

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Health in Australia
The health of individual or community is affected by environment, politics, occupation,
culture and many other factors. Using Gibbs’s reflection cycle, I will discuss the different
determinants of health and the impacts among Australia's Pacific Islander (Samoan). Some of the
common health issues (HIV/AIDS, diabetes, cancer and poor pregnancy outcomes) are related to
poor dietary habits among in this community.
An individual from Samoan is seven times highly likely to be hospitalized for diabetes-
related complications compared to the rest of the population. In addition, a Samoan is highly
likely to die of preventable conditions including heart and kidney conditions. All these
conditions are deeply rooted in unsupportive dietary habits. Most of the people affected by
malnutrition are the people living in the urban areas. Because of urbanization, people have
changed their living style, and they eat unhealthy foods. Unhealthy eating leads to rapid weight
gain and related conditions.
By working in the community in a program aimed mitigating on HIV/AIDS, I have
learned a great deal about this community. I have noticed that they hardly trust outsiders in
matters of health. It took months for me to learn a few local phrases and to interact with them on
a daily basis to earn their trust. The central purpose of the nutrition education program (NEP) is
to help individuals and families with PLWHA with limited resources make healthier food
choices and adopt physically active lifestyles by mastering the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and
behavior changes vital to better their health and life in general. NEP is accessible to all youths
living and women with HIV/AIDS at no cost. Some of the possible strategies are community and
school gardens, healthy food pantries and community sporting activities for women and youths

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living HIV/IDS. In collaboration with community partnerships, NEP works towards improving
the health of the Samoans.
According to Gibbs’ action plan stage, more can be done. The program coverage has not
been felt in every part of the community. Given another chance Centers will be established in a
10-kilometer radius from each other to enhance access. Each center will have five personnel each
trained different aspects if HIV/AIDS nutrition management: nurse, nutritionist, doctor, sports
scientists and an agriculturist. All programs activities will be conducted from centers established
in Samoan during the first three weeks of program initiation. Afterward, some activities
including community and school gardening program will be scaled up to individuals’,
community’s or schools’ gardens (Whitehead et al., 2014). This is important in ensuring that the
participants can practice what they learn at the centers.
Cancer is also another common illness in Australia. The common cancers experienced by
the Australia people are lung, liver, and stomach. It has been proven that most men from this
community smoke and drink alcohol which predisposes them to liver and lung cancers.
Moreover, there is an increase in water pollution in Australia because of increase in population,
discharge of untreated industrial products and agricultural runoff with fertilizers and pesticides to
rivers, lakes, and ocean (Siegel et al., 2017). Therefore, the drinking water has chemical such as
microsystems which cannot be removed by heating or disinfecting the water. Contaminated
water causes liver cancer which has been witnessed in china. In addition the water has a high
arsenic concentration which causes skin cancer and malignant neoplasms. However, there is a
paucity of data to show the devastating the effects of cancer among Samoans and other native
Australians (Moore et al., 2010). I have observed that Samoans are secretive individuals. They

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do not like disclosing their health conditions. In addition, they hardly seek healthcare services for
checkups until the prognosis of the disease worsens completely.
It will require collective responsibility to intervene in cancer and cancer-related illnesses
among Samoans. Given another chance to be a part of the program, I will focus more on
incorporating local leaders and healers. These are respected people in the community. They will
help in encouraging people to seek cancer screening early before the prognosis is too bad. Also,
the leaders will play an instrumental role in encouraging their community members not to hide
their condition. This will, in turn, create support groups in which people can talk about the
challenges they are undergoing in addressing cancer and cancer-related conditions.
Samoans also need to be to be encouraged to seek healthcare services in government-
funded facilities that are subsidized healthcare to make it affordable to all people. The
government has also been keen on distribution health facilities and services equitably. In
addition, the government has also been keen in providing health education to the people. I will
encourage the Samoans to take advantage of this program to improve their health.
Lastly, poor pregnancy outcomes have been reported among Australia's Pacific Islander
for a long time. As a nursing practitioner, I have had to change my approach to teaching nursing
or expectant mothers time and again to realize desirable healthcare outcomes. Here is a short
case study that UI encountered recently. Jane, a severely anemic 26-year old exclusively
breastfeeding woman, desires to conceive before the end of the year. She argues that she want to
focus on her career after three years. So she wants to dedicate the next three years raising
children.

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Guided by Gibbs Model, I devised three main strategies to correct Jane’s condition:
education combined with dietary changes or diversification to enhance iron intake and
bioavailability, iron supplementation and iron fortification of foods. In our case, I had adopted
dietary approaches only. All efforts should be funneled towards ensuring Jane’s access to iron-
rich foods. Some of the most popular foods rich in iron include liver, meat, fish, poultry, and
non-animal foods including legumes, green leafy vegetables, nuts, oilseeds, and dried fruits
(Goonewardene, Shehata & Hamad, 2012). In Jane’s case, I recommended to her to combine
heme and non-heme iron sources to enhance absorption. Bioavailability of iron in foods is
immensely induced by enhancers in the certain foods such as ascorbic acid found in citrus fruits,
green leafy vegetables, some germinated or fermented foods including soya sauce to mention just
but a few (Idowu, Mafiana, & Dopu, 2007). By interacting with Samoans, my approach to
nursing has remarkably changed. There is need to healthcare providers to work in harmony
diagnosing and dispensing healthcare services.

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References
Moore, M. A., Baumann, F., Foliaki, S., Goodman, M. T., Haddock, R., Maraka, R., ... & Sobue,
T. (2010). Cancer epidemiology in the pacific islands-past, present and future. Asian Pacific
journal of cancer prevention: APJCP, 11(0 2), 99.
Goonewardene, M., Shehata, M., & Hamad, A. (2012). Anaemia in pregnancy. Best practice &
research Clinical obstetrics & gynaecology,26(1), 3-24.
Idowu, O. A., Mafiana, C. F., & Dopu, S. (2007). Anaemia in pregnancy: a survey of pregnant
women in Abeokuta, Nigeria. African health sciences,5(4), 295-299.
Whitehead, M., Jones, R., Howell, R., Lilley, R., & Pykett, J. (2014). Nudging all over the
World. ESRC Report, Economic and Social Research Council, Swindon and Edinburgh.
Siegel, R. L., Miller, K. D., Fedewa, S. A., Ahnen, D. J., Meester, R. G., Barzi, A., & Jemal, A.
(2017). Colorectal cancer statistics, 2017.CA: a cancer journal for clinicians, 67(3), 177-
193.