Assessing Vulnerable Populations and the Impact of Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Bowie, Prince George's County, Maryland

Vulnerable Population Overview

Introduction (one paragraph): The introduction should be interesting and capture the reader’s attention.

Provide a brief description of your community including the city name and state and key features.

Briefly introduce one vulnerable population that you identified in your assessment.

Discuss the purpose of your paper. The purpose statement of the paper should relate to assessing this vulnerable population in your community.

Vulnerable Population Overview (one to two paragraphs):

Describe one vulnerable group in your community in greater detail.

Include your observations about this group from the windshield survey.

Discuss events or trends that have affected this vulnerable group such as economic conditions, trends in health related behaviors or disease rates, etc.

Strengths, Risk Factors, and/or Barriers (two to three paragraphs):

Discuss the strengths, risk factors, and/or barriers that impact this vulnerable population’s health.

Include support from at least one scholarly peer-reviewed journal article in this discussion. Search peer reviewed journals to find a scholarly article that discuss the strengths, risk factors, and/or barriers faced by this vulnerable group. Summarize what you learned from this article and cite the source in the text and reference page (Author, year). For this section, you must choose at least one scholarly article from a peer-reviewed journal. The article must be less than 10 years old (less than 5 years is best). You may include and cite your textbook or other scholarly sources as well, but they do not count as the scholarly journal article.

Community Resources (one to two paragraphs): Search your local public health department website, the internet, the local newspaper and/or telephone book for health resources available in your community for this vulnerable group.

Briefly describe the resources in your community that are available for this group.

Are these resources adequate? Discuss gaps in services that you identified.

Community Health Problem Diagnosis (one to two paragraphs):

Based on your assessment and the Healthy People 2020 objectives, identify and discuss one priority community health problem that a community health nurse could positively impact. Examples include an increase in teen pregnancies, prevalence of cancer, high incidence of tobacco use, above average infant mortality etc. The problem must relate to the vulnerable population you identified.

Sexually Transmitted Diseases are commonly caused by sex majorly anal or vaginal intercourse. Some examples of STDs include: syphilis, genital herpes, Chlamydia, gonorrhea, HIV/AIDS genital warts among others. My study encompassed Bowie City of Prince George’s County, Maryland State. Prince George’s County is located in Bowie city, Maryland State. It has the least population density in the metro region of Maryland largest group are African American or the Black. This population has low income, less than sixty five years and is uninsured. This is because Maryland State isn’t so much restrictive on Medicaid income requirements. Prince George’s County has more females than males and most children live below poverty levels ranking it second for STDs in Maryland. (Cates, 1999). The most vulnerable population to the STD identified in my study are the: adolescents, children living below poverty levels, injecting drug users who are HIV positive and those who share needles, low income youths and elderly persons and those practicing high risk behaviors. Main purpose of this study is to establish what causes vulnerability to STDs, how and factors that leads to the spread of the diseases?

Strengths, Risk Factors, and Barriers

The vulnerable group to the SDTs is the youths, specifically the campus students. This is due to students’ attitude towards safe sex practices among themselves. Youths don’t care about using condoms neither do they care about their partners. According to my observation, most students practice unprotected sex. Others prefer purchasing the contraceptive pills using condoms regardless of their partner’s status. (Nguyen et al., 2008).

Youths, especially campus students are most vulnerable due to some reasons such as financial status of the student. Some have tuition fee problems. Besides, Prince George’s County closely borders the Washington DC which has recorded high rates of HIV infections in the past few years. It’s approximated that at least 3% of its total population is infected with the HIV virus. Inadequate health facilities in the county also lead to increased lack of health care access. It’s approximated that about 150,000 residents do not have health insurance with over 100,000 on Medicaid. Campus students also get involved in uncontrolled behavior exposing them to STDs whenever they have unprotected sex. (Mayaud and Mabay, 2004)

STDs are preventable diseases but only if everyone is health conscious. Measures such as promoting healthy sexual behavior, increasing proper healthcare services as well capacity building can be implemented to reduce it.  Despite STDs being preventable, they on the other hand have significant health problems which aren’t easily identifiable by the public health officers, the policy makers and the public at large.

Severe STD infections from diseases such as Chlamydia and gonorrhea if left untreated for long time periods may with serious health consequences for example ectopic pregnancy, chronic pelvic pain and infertility in women. STD infections may also increase risk of getting and transmitting the HIV viruses since most of them do not show symptoms at the early stages. However, risk assessment can be done to help in decision making such as encouraging patients to go for screening. (Cates, 1990) Young females are more susceptible to infections as compared to the males because of their anatomical biological characteristics and negotiating condom use is basically for the man.  

Most adolescents and young adults are at high risk of contracting the STDs since they do not have health cover insurances. Knowledge and awareness on STDs among the youths is as well very poor.  Barriers such as racial and ethnic differences especially the African Americans or the Blacks are associated with high rates of poverty and limited or no access to medical services. Secrecy and sexuality perhaps may also lead to STD spread since most youths aren’t comfortable discussing their intimate life, especially those related to sex. Prince George’s County has poor and few health care facilities but access to high quality health care is paramount at the early stages of detection of any infection. Counseling and treatment is most important at this stage. The African Americans and the Blacks in Bowie town are highly marginalized and poor but STD is only associated with the disadvantaged group hence they’re highly affected.  (Jemmott et al., 2008)

Community Resources

There is very great challenge in the health sector for the patients with the STD infections in the Bowie City. A good number of health centers do not offer quality services for its clients despite the increasing cases of infections. However, Greater Baden Medical Services (GBMS) offers full and quality services to the residents of Bowie city. It’s fully equipped medical equipment for those willing to be screened, treated and Medicaid services.

The Greater Baden Medical Services has come up with mobile clinic services to reach those in remote areas, elderly and other groups that find it hard to get medical services. This is because most of the residents of Bowie city are marginalized and poor and some stay in the remote areas where they cannot easily access medical services. The mobile clinic therefore make an effort to reach the remote areas to offer services to the old and others who cannot make it to the city for health care services

The main objective according to the Healthy People 2020 is improving the quality of the health care services to achieve equity and increasing healthy life for everyone. The main people identified during my study are the high prevalence of cancer due to increased practice of unprotected sex among the youths (Marks, Crepaz & Janssen, 2006). This can however be lowered by adding more females in their mid-twenties who are not enrolled in Medicaid plans and are screened for genital infections, Increasing the number of females youths health insurance plans for commercial purposes and screened for infections. Lowering syphilis and gonorrhea transmission at early and late stages within the family can significantly lower the transmission.

Conclusion

Sexually Transmitted Diseases is a real among the youths and the poor of Bowie City. The diseases are majorly associated with the poor and the marginalized. Campus students are also highly affected. Means such drug abuse leading to unprotected sex acts therefore have to be discouraged and community sensitization on STDs should be put on the forefront. Despite STDs rising with increasing population, there are not enough health facilities in Bowie City. However, the government, policy makers and the health technical staff are working as a team to ensure the epidemic is reduced.

References

Cates Jr, W. (1999). Estimates of the incidence and prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases in the United States. Sexually transmitted diseases, 26(4), S2-S7.

Jemmott 3rd, J. B., Jemmott, L. S., & Fong, G. T. (1992). Reductions in HIV risk-associated sexual behaviors among black male adolescents: effects of an AIDS prevention intervention. American journal of public health, 82(3), 372-377.

Jemmott, L. S., Jemmott, J. B., Hutchinson, M. K., Cederbaum, J. A., &                           O’Leary, A. (2008). Sexually transmitted infection/HIV risk reduction interventions in clinical practice settings. Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic, & Neonatal Nursing, 37(2), 137-145.

Marks, G., Crepaz, N., & Janssen, R. S. (2006). Estimating sexual transmission of HIV from persons aware and unaware that they are infected with the virus in the USA. Aids, 20(10), 1447-1450.

Mayaud, P.& Mabey, D. (2004). Approaches to the control of sexually transmitted infections in developing countries: old problems and modern challenges. Sexually transmitted infections, 80(3), 174-182.

Nguyen, T. V., Van Khuu, N., Le, T. T. T., Nguyen, A. P., Cao, V., Tham, D. C. & Detels, R. (2008). Sexually transmitted infections and risk factors for gonorrhea and chlamydia in female sex workers in Soc Trang, Vietnam. Sexually transmitted diseases, 35(11), 935.