Community Psychology Report: Healthcare Issues and Elderly Programs

This report delves into the realm of community psychology, focusing on critical healthcare issues and the programs designed to address them. The assignment begins by identifying prominent healthcare concerns, such as rising costs, an aging population, and the emergence of new diseases, along with the ongoing threat of terrorism and its implications for healthcare preparedness. The report emphasizes the role of community psychologists, highlighting their expertise in behavioral psychology and their ability to influence individual behavior and lifestyle choices to promote health and prevent illness. Furthermore, it explores specific programs aimed at supporting the elderly, including attendant services and home meal delivery. The report also discusses programs for end-of-life care and analyzes gaps in current healthcare systems, particularly concerning diabetes management. The overall goal is to provide a detailed overview of healthcare challenges and the role of psychologists in addressing them to improve community health outcomes.

Running head: Community Psychology
Community Psychology
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Community Psychology
Answer 1: Some of the issues in health care according to present trends are:
 The rising of the healthcare costs
 The number of elderly people are growing.
 There are still many people who are uninsured.
 There are so many new and infectious diseases arising every now and then.
 There is always threat to terrorism and attack can happen at any time. Future
preparations could not be done for such situations.
 Lifestyle related health issues especially due to obesity.
Health Care Issues Data
Source: (Google Images, 2018)
The community psychologists will have to act like a behavioural psychologist who will give
the understanding of the biological, social and behavioural health and illness to people. They
are always equipped with the skills needed in the training, information to understand the base
of cognitive processes and to prepare the body in developing dysfunctions. In addition to that,
they are able to benefit people in modifying their own behaviour as well as lifestyle for
preventing and recovering from the problems (Wahass, 2005).
Answer 2: The programs for addressing the elderly are:
 Attendant Services
 Emergency responses like DASSPD
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Community Psychology
 Home Delivery Meals
 House Keeping
 Respite care
The programs to address end of life issues are Island Health’s EOL program and American
Psychological Association etc.
The health of a person and quality of life relies on multiple systems of community and not
just simply on good functioning of health and care system. To make changes in the existing
systems, these programs and policies are implemented. They improve the health of many
people in the community.
The main gaps in the care which are identified consists of the lack of standardized glucose
management policies, lack of training of the professionals of healthcare especially in diabetes
management and lack of automated data collection and its analysis (Golden, Hager, Gould,
Mathioudakis, & Pronovost, 2017). Such outcomes were to gain resource in collaborative
diabetes health system initiatives.
These gaps can only be addresses by the continuous monitoring of the health records as well
as by implementing better management programs in the hospitals as well as make people
aware about it.
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Community Psychology
References
Golden, S. H., Hager, D., Gould, L. J., Mathioudakis, N., & Pronovost, P. J. (2017). A Gap Analysis
Needs Assessment Tool to Drive a Care Delivery and Research Agenda for Integration of
Care and Sharing of Best Practices Across a Health System. The Joint Commission Journal
on Quality and Patient Safety, 43, 18-28.
Wahass, S. H. (2005). The role of psychologists in health care delivery. Journal of Family &
Community Medicine, 12(2).
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