Cardiovascular Disorders: Individual, Family, Community Essay

This essay delves into the multifaceted impact of cardiovascular disorders (CVD), exploring their effects on individuals, families, and the broader community. It begins by defining CVD and highlighting its prevalence, emphasizing the physical, emotional, and financial burdens it places on affected individuals, as well as the strain it exerts on families and healthcare resources. The essay then connects CVD to the Australian National Health Priority, underscoring the importance of preventative measures. Furthermore, it examines the relationship between CVD and various social determinants of health, such as income, education, and access to healthcare, illustrating how these factors contribute to the development and progression of the disease. The essay concludes by discussing treatment approaches, emphasizing lifestyle modifications and preventive strategies, including health promotion programs and environmental changes to foster healthy living. References are provided to support the arguments presented.

Running head: CARDIOVASCULAR DISORDERS
CARDIOVASCULAR DISORDERS
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Cardiovascular disorder and its impact on individual, family as well as community:
Cardiovascular disorder can be explained as the group of the disorders that include blood
vessels as well as different heart disorders. This group of disorders is mainly seen to include
cardiomyopathy, heart failures cases, peripheral vascular disorders, congenital heart issues and
even stroke. In the year 2014-2015, 18.3% of the people of the nation was seen to suffer from
cardiovascular disorders which accounted for about 4.2 million people in the nation. Among
these people, 1.2 million people were seen to be suffering from stroke as well as heart disorders
with around 2.6 million people have been found to be suffering from hypertension and 430000
people to have faced heart attack (Wang et al. 2016).
People suffering from these disorders are seen to suffer from angina. Affected individuals
also suffer from shortness of breath, chest pain, swelling as well as dizziness. These symptoms
might interfere with their daily activities in their lives making them suffer physically, as well as
emotionally and mentally. Moreover, people are seen to have less productivity in their
workplaces where suffering due to the disorder would impact their working tenacity. They would
also feel stressed and anxious as they would have to live with long term ailments that would
make their lives restricted. Moreover, people would also have to spend huge amount of money
on their treatments which would affect their financial stability as well. Families are seen to go
through poor quality lives where they have to spend huge amount of time in caring for the
patients (Urden et al. 2019). They would have to restrict their lives for caring for the patient
which make them miss many opportunities in lives like socializing with others, going for
recreational purposes and others. This makes them upset and feel fatigued. They may also face
social exclusion as well as they have to care for the affected members. Moreover, family
members are also seen to fee; guilty when they believe that their patients are suffering because of

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their lack of care for their affected member. Flow of finance also affects the economical well-
being of the family making them to live restricted lives. Communities are also affected because
of the disorder. Huge amount of healthcare resources of the community have to be spent for the
treatment of the disorders which affect the other aspects of the communities. These resources
could have been allocated to more severe unavoidable disorders also. When people of the
community suffer from chronic ailments like CVD, they would not be able to be productive for
their community as a result of which community development might be obstructed. When people
of the communities suffer, community can never achieve ability and can never flourish (Peate et
al. 2018).
Relationship between the health issues and one of the national health priorities:
Cardiovascular disorder has been identified as one of the Australian National Health
priority itself. Most of the studies are of the opinion that this disorder mainly occurs because of
poor lifestyle choices. Hence, the premature deaths and the morbidity causes by the disorder are
considered to be preventable if proper lifestyle choices are followed. Hence, professionals are of
the opinion that the risk factors associated with cardiovascular disorders like diabetes and cancer
as well as poor unhealthy food consumptions as well as lack of sedentary lives need to be
modified so as to prevent cardiovascular disorders. Five of the twenty leading causes of the death
in the nation are attributed to CVD in the year 2007. This disorder is also found to be the reason
for deaths of about 40688 people in the nation that accounted for about 30% of the total number
of the registered deaths in the year 2007. The various types of the disorders that were included
under the term of cardiovascular disorders are cardiomyopathy, acute myocardial infarction,
congestive heart failures, peripheral vascular disorders and many others. Data has also shown
that about a total of 78351 deaths had been reported where this disorder was found to be either

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associated or the underlying cause of the deaths of the people (Sundstorm et al. 2016). It has
been found that in the year 2014-2015, 34% of the population that accounted for about 6 million
people in the nation who are aged 18 years or above had high blood pressure and in the year
2011-2012, about one third of the adult population aging 18 years or above were seen to have
high levels of cholesterol. This scenario shows that all the risk factors that result in CVD are
present in people in very high numbers which increase the chance of occurrence of the disorders.
Hence, this disorder because of its outcomes of high morbidity and mortality is considered to be
one of the national health priority areas in the nation.
The disorders and relationship with social determinants of health:
Social determinants of health are those conditions where people are born, age, work,
survive and flourish. These conditions have huge strengths in altering the living condition of the
people wither making them flourish in life or resulting in damaging their health and well-being.
One of the social determinants of health that affects the people making them suffer from poor
quality life is poor income and unemployment. These social determinants make people suffer
from financial instability for which they are forced to buy cheaper calorie dense fast foods and
takeaway foods which make them probe to suffer from obesity (Sharma et al. 2019). This in turn
increases their risk for development of cardiovascular disorders. Another important social
determinant of health is the lack of education and poor health literacy. People with low levels of
education and those with poor health literacy do not have the ideas about the importance of
taking proper healthy diets as well as the importance of being active and exercising regularly.
Lack of knowledge about the importance of appropriate health behaviors and the ways by which
proper lifestyle choices can be make them prone to develop cardiovascular disorders. Another
important social determinant of health is the lack of access to the healthcare. People living in the

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remote areas cannot access the healthcare services in the urban areas where distance acts as the
barriers for which they cannot get services like screening sessions, health education sessions and
others when required. People belonging to culturally different cohorts for example Aboriginals
also have higher prevalence of CVD (Geurts et al. 2015). They do not want to access the
healthcare services with the fear of being stigmatized and discriminated and recovering culturally
incompetent care services. People belonging to low socio-economic status cannot access the
healthcare for they cannot afford the healthcare services. Hence, prevalence of CVD is
increasing in the nation.
Treatment approaches:
CVD has been identified as a lifestyle disorder and hence professionals are of the opinion
that lifestyle of the people needs to be modified through the methods of preventive methods of
care to ensure that they do not develop CVD. Preventive methods can help in the reduction of the
healthcare costs which are spent on curing people who are already affected by the disorder.
These preventive measures should include arranging for health promotion programs for
spreading awareness about the disorder among people and making them adapt strategies by
which they can prevent themselves from the chances of developing CVD (Kendir et al. 2018).
Health education session would mainly include people being educated about the causes, risk
factors and the consequences of the disorder of CVD and helping them to adopt lifestyle choices
that prevent the disorder. Eating of green vegetables and fruits as well as lean meats and
avoiding of fatty foods which are calorie dense can reduce the chances of the disorder along with
the taking up of physical exercise sessions that help in burning calories. These would help in
lessening the chances of the occurrence of the disorder. Another important aspect that healthcare
professionals should advocate about is the modification of the environment to develop a

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supportive environment that would promote healthy living. levying taxes on calorie containing
fast foods and take away foods, reducing prices of nutritious organic foods, building up of green
parks and fields in community for physical exercises, running and jogging and others can help in
preventing of the disorder (Han et al. 2019). Apart from these, already affected individuals
should be advised to undertake screening sessions from time to time to identify whether they are
out of danger or not. Importance of medication should also be discussed with the affected
individuals in the proper manner so that they can manage their health condition successfully.

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References:
Geurts, M.M., Stewart, R.E., Brouwers, J.R., de Graeff, P.A. and de Gier, J.J., 2016. Implications of
a clinical medication review and a pharmaceutical care plan of polypharmacy patients with a
cardiovascular disorder. International journal of clinical pharmacy, 38(4), pp.808-815.
Han, J.K., Yano, E.M., Watson, K.E. and Ebrahimi, R., 2019. Cardiovascular Care in Women
Veterans: A Call to Action. Circulation, 139(8), pp.1102-1109.
Kendir, C., van den Akker, M., Vos, R. and Metsemakers, J., 2018. Cardiovascular disease patients
have increased risk for comorbidity: A cross-sectional study in the Netherlands. European Journal of
General Practice, 24(1), pp.45-50.
Peate, I. and Wild, K. eds., 2018. Nursing Practice: Knowledge and Care. John Wiley & Sons.
Sharma, M., Singh, G. and Singh, R., 2019. An Advanced Conceptual Diagnostic Healthcare
Framework for Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disorders. arXiv preprint arXiv:1901.10530.
Sundström, B.W., Holmberg, M., Herlitz, J., Karlsson, T. and Andersson, H., 2016. Possible effects
of a course in cardiovascular nursing on prehospital care of patients experiencing suspected acute
coronary syndrome: a cluster randomised controlled trial. BMC nursing, 15(1), p.52.
Urden, L.D., Stacy, K.M. and Lough, M.E., 2019. Priorities in critical care nursing. Elsevier Health
Sciences.
Wang, M.Y., Chiu, C.H., Lee, H.C., Su, C.T. and Tsai, P.S., 2016. Cardiovascular reactivity in
patients with major depressive disorder with high-or low-level depressive symptoms: a cross-
sectional comparison of cardiovascular reactivity to laboratory-induced mental stress. Biological
research for nursing, 18(2), pp.221-229.

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