Chronic Disease Management and Prevention
Introduction
Chronic disease management and prevention is a top healthcare condition affecting people of all ages. Chronic diseases refer to diseases such as diabetes, cancer, and heart diseases, which primarily lead to disabilities and high death cases all over America. Yet, the sad reality about these diseases is that they ultimately last for an extended period and have devastating effects on the body. In America, almost half of its population suffers from chronic diseases, primarily diseases such as heart disease and hypertension. These diseases are, in totality, responsible for about 40% of American deaths. This means that about 6 in every ten people are affected by chronic disease, and the number continues to grow significantly. People mainly utilize interprofessional resources to offer significant access to carers, families, and patients and support chronic disease management goals. This paper will discuss chronic disease management and prevention as a health concern affecting young, middle, and older adults via epidemiology, interventions, and interprofessional collaboration.
Epidemiology
In the US, chronic diseases make up about 6-7 of the causes, as per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics. As the population continues to become older, chronic disease prevalence continues to skyrocket. Therefore, the issue of chronic disease is a significant health concern across the globe, which affects communities, families, and individuals’ lives. In many Western nations, the top chronic diseases are believed to be heart disease, hypertension, depression, cancer, and cardiovascular disease (Younossi et al., 2019). These diseases are triggered mainly by unhealthy behaviors, including unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, and even smoking habits. Yet, chronic diseases make up the top death causes around the world. In light of this, the three epidemiological terms affecting chronic disease management and prevention are prevalence, incidence, and mortality. Prevalence is the totality of individuals commonly involved in emerging disease cases, particularly per 1000 population.
On the other hand, incidence refers to the disease’s assessment and how it influences an individual’s diagnosis rate in a given time. Thus, newer cases of disease contribute to their incidences. Lastly, the mortality is simply the number of death cases caused by a disease. In young people, the prevalence of chronic diseases is about 10-30%, meaning that about 22% of youths will highly likely report chronic diseases (Reynolds et al., 2018). However, about 1-3 older adults will develop a chronic illness, whereas about 95% of older patients will suffer from a chronic condition (Younossi et al., 2019). With all these statistics in place, the incidence of chronic diseases will significantly double in the coming two decades due to cases of obesity.
Interventions of Chronic Disease Management and Prevention
Chronic diseases can be appropriately managed via proper care interventions focusing on short-term and long-term solutions. According to Reynolds et al. (2018), the best place to begin is in primary and community healthcare settings because of its significant challenge to families worldwide. Some critical defining elements of chronic disease management are comprehensiveness, coordination, and continuity, making it applicable to chronic conditions. Some resources and policies that can be utilized to manage chronic disease include self-management support, clinical information systems, decision support, and delivery system design. Hence, the delegation of intervention measures is effective for promoting communication and educating and instructing patients on the exact treatment plan for chronic diseases. The treatment intervention aligns with acceptability, usability, and feasibility measures. According to the World Health Organization, the first step that can be taken to prevent chronic diseases is small-group meetings. Small group meetings help identify chronic diseases and efficiently develop a proper disease management strategy for addressing the chronic condition. This intervention is timely for drawing engagement with others and promoting social support, discussion, and peer interaction. This intervention is also fundamental for evaluating health care conditions’ impact, acceptability, and feasibility.
The second intervention for managing chronic diseases is establishing internet-based mHealth technologies. The use of mHealth technologies ranges from mobile telemedicine, real-time monitoring, healthcare data monitoring for patients, researchers, and practitioners, and healthcare delivery. According to Fan & Zhao (2022), the use of chronic diseases depends on mobile health technology to support wearable technology, social media, telecommunications services, web-based technologies, smartphone applications, and transferable diseases for rehabilitation support, risk screening, medication adherence, clinical decision support, lifestyle interventions, and educational management. The development of this intervention has demonstrated significant efficacy in chronic disease management by decreasing mortality and rehospitalization rates, improving medication adherence, and primarily alleviating disease-related symptoms. The other intervention is to offer printed materials for those who are technologically literate. The materials should be scholarly and credible to help attain a higher /feasibility level via in-person or mail delivery. This more remarkable and feasible solution promotes critical health indicators for physician visits. These materials are significant for clarifying and reinforcing valuable health data (Allegrante et al., 2019).
Interprofessional Collaboration
Interprofessional teams play a significant role in the interactions of patients with healthcare workers via collaborative management. In the healthcare setting, the use of coordinated healthcare delivery is something that is normalized for better outcomes. Whereas multidisciplinary care teams depend on effective chronic illness intervention for successful management of healthcare conditions, their success comes from utilizing behavioral and clinical skills for intensive follow-up, self-management support, protocol medication regulation, and population management. The first specific function of interprofessional collaborative management is that of nurse care managers, who significantly promote effective care treatment for chronic diseases. Nurses are instrumental in adding experience in chronic disease, ranging from care and treatment (Pintz et al., 2021). Nurses play centralized roles in promoting practices from hospitals, related institutions, and clinical institutions. Medical specialists are the second example of the interprofessional role in managing chronic diseases. Medical specialists play a fundamental role that supersedes consultancy either directly or indirectly. Thirdly, social workers are part of the interprofessional team and have significant input in the daily needs of patients. Social workers are actively involved in patient care teams and promote specialties for patients in management plans. Accordingly, lay health workers are the other key personnel who play a significant role in the collaborative management of chronic disease. Lay health workers help bridge the gap between culturally and ethnically distinct populations and middle-class health professionals.
Summary
Interprofessional team collaboration is fundamental in promoting diverse populations of people suffering from chronic diseases. The interprofessional collaboration begins with identifying the various conditions affecting patients and providing good communication and teamwork among therapists, pharmacists, nurses, and doctors. To address the patient’s needs. This collaboration is essential because every expert brings their insights and expertise for proper sharing with other sectors to impact healthcare delivery, safety, and patient outcomes profoundly. Even though interprofessional collaboration can be time-consuming, it results in positivity in the work setting and improves patient outcomes. Most importantly, interprofessional collaborative content matters because it enhances workplace patient care, health systems, and environments to offer the best experience for external stakeholders and patients. In addition, the other vital roles of interprofessional collaborative content include the promotion of job satisfaction, reduced healthcare costs and inefficiencies, expedition of treatment initiatives, medical error mitigation, and enhanced patient care and outcomes.
Conclusion
Chronic diseases refer to diseases such as diabetes, cancer, and heart diseases, which primarily lead to disabilities and high death cases all over America. These diseases are, in totality, responsible for about 40% of American deaths. In the US, chronic diseases make up about 6-7 of the causes, as per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics. In many Western nations, the top chronic diseases are believed to be heart disease, hypertension, depression, cancer, and cardiovascular disease. Thus, about 1-3 older adults will develop a chronic illness, whereas about 95% of older patients will suffer from a chronic condition. Some interventions for managing these diseases include setting small-group meetings, using internet-based mHealth technologies, and using print materials to promote feasibility. While pursuing these interventions, utilizing behavioral and clinical skills for intensive follow-up, self-management support, protocol medication regulation, and population management is essential. These skills should be undertaken by nurse care managers, medical specialists, social workers, and lay health workers.
References
Allegrante, J. P., Wells, M. T., & Peterson, J. C. (2019). Interventions to Support Behavioral Self-Management of Chronic Diseases. Annual Review of Public Health, 40(1), 127–146. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-040218-044008
Fan, K., & Zhao, Y. (2022). Mobile health technology: A novel tool in chronic disease management. Intelligent Medicine, 2(1), 41–47. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.imed.2021.06.003
Pintz, C., Posey, L., Farmer, P., & Zhou, Q. (Pearl). (2021). Interprofessional care of people with multiple chronic conditions: An open-access resource for nursing educators. Nurse Education in Practice, 51, 102990. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nepr.2021.102990
Reynolds, R., Dennis, S., Hasan, I., Slewa, J., Chen, W., Tian, D., Bobba, S., & Zwar, N. (2018). A systematic review of chronic disease management interventions in primary care. BMC Family Practice, 19(1), 11. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12875-017-0692-3
Younossi, Z. M., Stepanova, M., Younossi, Y., Golabi, P., Mishra, A., Rafiq, N., & Henry, L. (2019). Epidemiology of chronic liver diseases in the USA in the past three decades. Gut, gutjnl-2019.
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