Community Health Case Study: Analyzing Maria's Family's Problems

This community health case study focuses on Maria, an 8-year-old girl living in Toronto with her mother and brother, who immigrated from Colombia. The family faces numerous challenges including financial difficulties, poor nutrition, and social isolation, stemming from the father's absence and the mother's stress and language barriers. The case study highlights the health consequences of these issues, such as Maria's nutritional deficiencies, learning difficulties, and emotional stress, as well as the mother's smoking habit and neighborhood violence. The assignment analyzes the impacts of these challenges on the family's overall well-being and explores potential interventions, including community support, educational programs, and improved nutrition to improve the family's health and social integration. The solutions provided address the specific health, economic, and social vulnerabilities the family experiences, emphasizing the need for tailored interventions to improve their quality of life.

Running head: COMMUNITY HEALTH CASE STUDY
Community Health Case Study
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1COMMUNITY HEALTH CASE STUDY
Answer 1.
Maria is an 8-year-old child suffering from many problems, such as economic and
communal issues. The threats that are mainly associated with Maria’s health are primarily
because of poor nutrition, which is required to grow the immune system stronger in
childhood. The main problems that can give rise are obesity, lower metabolism rate, anaemia,
along with iron deficiency and even Type2 diabetes in the long run.
The poor nutrition may also affect the child’s developmental stage, which the child
was already facing like learning problems and behaviour (Grantham-McGregor 2014). The
long-run threats that the child can face are neurological issues and defective brain
development. It will also lead to stress, depression and many other health complications.
Answer 2.
a. The challenges that are faced by the mother are mainly economic and verbal issues.
The health of the family is also diminishing due to this. Community funds can help
the family in coping up with the problems due to immigration. Several government
policies work to support the immigrate people. This program helps the immigrant
with employment facility, as well as resolving the health issue. Such a program is
Citizenship and Immigration Canada (Lawlor 2015) .
b. The child is facing many problems because of immigration. The physical
development of the child can be improved by assisting the child with nutritional food
that is low cost as that state of the family is financially destitute. The child is also not
attentive in the school as well as faces difficulty in learning. The child can be enrolled
in many educational and governmental problems, which will be helpful. The best
intervention to resolve a child’s emotional stress is by counselling and having

2COMMUNITY HEALTH CASE STUDY
effective communication; this will improve the learning and thinking ability of the
child.
c. The family was an immigrant in a completely new town, which developed many
problems among them. One of the issues faced by them is different behavioural
attitude from the neighbours. This is hampering the child’s growth and development
of the brain, which made the child socially awkward.
Answer No. 3
The child is suffering from learning disorders, inattention in class. The child is also
stressful and due to this getting involved in fights. She also has an emotional disturbance.
Another problem is a nutritional deficiency in the body. The school can help the child
with gaining confidence, becoming healthy and coping with all the challenges faced by
her (Lewallen 2015). The stressful condition and her difficulty in learning can be resolved
by effective communication with the child and her family. The child needs a friendly
atmosphere, which can be provided by school health programmes. Another strategy can
be giving the child psychoeducation, which will assess the problem and provide practical
learning outcome this will resolve the cognitive challenges faced by the child. The child
needs particular attention, which can also be given by the teachers. The child also needs
proper nutrition to develop the growth and immunity against diseases. The school can
plan vaccination programs in collaboration with health care centres in resolving the
problem. The food must be of low cost as the financial condition of the family is poor.
The social activity can also be increased which will help the child developing confidence.

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References
Grantham-McGregor, S.M., Fernald, L.C., Kagawa, R.M. and Walker, S., 2014. Effects of
integrated child development and nutrition interventions on child development and nutritional
status. Ann NY Acad Sci, 1308(1), pp.11-32.
Lawlor, A., 2015. Framing immigration in the Canadian and British news media. Canadian
Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique, 48(2), pp.329-355.
Lewallen, T.C., Hunt, H., Potts‐Datema, W., Zaza, S. and Giles, W., 2015. The whole school,
whole community, whole child model: A new approach for improving educational attainment
and healthy development for students. Journal of School Health, 85(11), pp.729-739.