Environmental health is one of the social issues that have gained unprecedented recognition among environmental health experts due to its much publicity and documentation in various discourse platforms and body of literature. Much of the information provided regarding environmental health issues always centers on the inherent relationships between the immediate physical environment and the people living within this environment. For example, people who are exposed to risks or hazards such as lead in their drinking water and polluted air bear a higher chance of developing severe health conditions like heart disease, dementia, asthma, and cancer, among others. With environmental health posing a significant health danger to the people, the onus of this paper is to develop an efficient Preliminary Care Coordination Plan to take care of this social issue for the health living of the people, as explained in the unfurling paragraphs.
Analysis of Environmental Health and best practices for health improvement
As already hinted out above, environmental health is a crucial health factor that needs to be regularly checked for people to be able to live well and avoid certain environmental-related illnesses. The vindicating reason for this assertion is that the environment surrounding people remains a key player in causing diseases among populations around the world as a predisposing factor. According to Healthy People 2030 (n.d.), approximately 12 million people globally meet their deaths every single year as a result of living as well as working in deplorable environmental conditions. Drawing from this study, considerable environmental efforts need to be put in place to ensure that there is more excellent care at physical, psychosocial, and cultural levels to help revert the devastating environmental conditions people live in to promote healthy living through emulating best practices aimed at attaining health improvement.
In the realms of environmental health as an issue, there is a plethora of best practices around the exposure to harmful pollutants found in soil, air, water, and food, in addition to materials surrounding workplaces and homes that need to be taken into consideration for health improvement. The first best practice to take is constantly cleaning homes and the environment in which people live to guard against toxic waste that can be deposited, causing diseases (Purwandari et al., 2024). For example, cleaning the physical environment improves the air we breathe in, making it accessible to dust, which eliminates allergies that can cause certain diseases like asthma. The other best practice is washing hands after visiting the toilet and touching objects or surfaces to ensure that germs are washed away, which may cause diseases like the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Being careful and constantly monitoring the kind of water people take in the community is another critical best practice, ensuring people stay healthy (Purwandari et al., 2024). For example, it is essential to always boil water before taking or putting water guards in place to kill germs that may be contaminating the water used for drinking. To a greater extent, lead exposure from factories around the environment may cause water pollution; thus, raising the alarm to the concerned authorities to take decisive actions can lead to the eradication of lead exposure the people, making them lead a healthy life.
Finally, promoting community awareness about the importance of environmental health in terms of psychology as well as cultural sensitivity is always a critical best practice. This practice is aimed at informing people about the various steps and actions they need to take to remedy the environment for healthy living. For example, when people in the community take action to make sure that the environment is clean, there are benefits associated with their psychosocial and cultural awareness. Such positive awareness is taken to be a coping strategy that may prevent emotional distress, depression, and anxiety, as well as positively apply cultural beliefs in the absence of environmental hazards.
Specific goals to address the healthcare problem
Among the many healthcare problems or challenges experienced by humanity, the environmental health problem is no exception. Thus, it needs to be addressed by employing specific goals. In this coordinated care plan, the first specific goal is to lessen the number of physical hazards available that cause environmental health problems or diseases (Portela Dos Santos et al., 2023). This can be done collaboratively by raising the level of environmental awareness by informing the local community members about the possible hazards such as water, soil, and air pollutants surrounding them, making the immediate environment hostile for them to live in. Another specific goal is to make people aware of championing the enactment of environmental policies and laws to govern the conduct of people, institutions, and the community regarding the essence of promoting a healthy living environment. Of course, this awareness mission is aimed at encouraging them to get rid of these hazards through legal enforcement, such as making the environment clean and suitable for them to live a healthy life and promoting environmental wellness.
The last particular objective or goal is to provide people with opportunities that make it possible for them to acquire or possess the needed knowledge, attitude, values, skills, and commitment to preserve, conserve, manage, and protect the physical environment, hence, improving it for healthy living (Portela Dos Santos et al., 2023). As the adage, “knowledge is power,” goes, this goal of making people knowledgeable on environmental aspects creates relatively new patterns of behavior based on individuals, specific groups, in addition to society at large. In any case, caring by cleaning and organizing people’s surroundings and empowering them with environmental knowledge is crucial. It makes them experience a good sense of comfort in addition to the creation of less environmental anxiety and living a healthy physical, cultural, and psychosocial life.
Available community resources for a safe and effective continuum of care
An effective and efficient continuum of care is often essential in guiding and tracking the welfare of the patients in a community through an integrated system of care. Therefore, there are many available community resources for the promotion of a healthy environment, enhancing the needed continuum of care in this case. One of the resources is the inclusion of environmental health clinics, which are facilities located within the community or the society, advancing the knowledge of environmental health and how it is essential to people’s overall health.
According to Erku et al. (2023), the other helpful resource in the community is community clean-up programs, which are regularly formed to help lessen environmental hazards like piling garbage and scattered litter within the environment. As such, waste management is located at strategic points within the community to address hazards like garbage that always piles up and needs cleaning. Lastly, advocacy groups are essential community resources formed by like-minded individuals championing environmental-friendly actions (Erku et al., 2023). The groups always promote environmental health so that people within the community or society can live a healthy life. Advocacy groups always make a collaborative effort to eradicate environmental hazards, targeting individuals who are affected by environmental problems.
References
Erku, D., Khatri, R., Endalamaw, A., Wolka, E., Nigatu, F., Zewdie, A., & Assefa, Y. (2023). Community engagement initiatives in primary Health care to achieve universal health coverage: A realist synthesis of a scoping review. PLOS ONE, 18(5), e0285222. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0285222
Healthy People 2030. (n.d.). Environmental Health. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://health.gov/healthypeople/objectives-and-data/browse-objectives/environmental-health
Portela Dos Santos, O., Melly, P., Joost, S., & Verloo, H. (2023). Climate change, environmental health, and challenges for nursing discipline. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 20(9), 5682. doi:10.3390/ijerph20095682
Purwandari, R., Daniel, D., & Hafidz, F. (2024). Analysis of water, sanitation, and hygiene facilities using the WASH-FIT approach and its relation to patient satisfaction and maternal mortality at hospitals in Indonesia. Frontiers in Public Health, 12. doi:10.3389/fpubh.2024.1322470
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