Assessing the Health Needs of Populations

Introduction

This assessment is specifically formed to focus on the healthcare needs among young adults and kids in UK where the primary health care need which arose recently is control over the type 2 diabetes in that specific population. The recent studies have raised the type 2 diabetes health issues mainly among the young people and kids which is gradually making them physically weak for the coming future (Gracia-Lor et al. 2017). Some researchers revealed that due to the bad dietary habit, lack of physical engagement and poor daily routine, this has been a rising health issue among kids and young adults too. It has been predicted that if this has not been changed then nearly around 5.5 million people including young adults and kids will be facing the type 2 diabetes in the UK by the coming year 2030 which is nearly about 90 per cent of the population (Arrazola et al 2018).

In this assessment, the three major heath need assessment approaches are discussed with their strengths and weaknesses in regards with the type 2 diabetes health issue. The new analysis done by NHS, around 6,836 young adults and kids have been reported to have type 2 diabetes only in Wales and England only (Rousham et al. 2018). The UK government have issues healthcare policies and adopted major strategies in this regard to make people aware of this heath need. Despite all these measures, the ratio of the young adults and kids fighting with the type 2 diabetes has not decreased as expected. So some advices are highlighted in this matter whose adoption can make a difference in this regard. Other than the three HNA approaches, some other approaches are also briefed and from all the suggested approaches which one might work better in case of type 2 diabetes is also mentioned. Along with all these, what stages are involved in the process of health need assessment is also explained in short.

Health Needs Assessment (HNA) approaches including their strengths and weaknesses

Healthcare needs are those facilities which benefit a person by giving health care education, disease prevention, treatment facilities, diagnosis, and terminal care facilities and rehabilitation. In terms of diabetes type 2 in adults and kids, UK government have formulated many policies to make people aware of the healthcare requirements. In UK, the government have sponsored a prime universal healthcare centre which was named as the National Health Service (NHS). The National Health Services is consisted of a series which includes a list of various publicly funded health care systems in all over UK. The NHS (UK) also includes in itself NHS (England), NHS Wales, NHS Scotland, & Health and Social Care Centre in Northern Ireland (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, 2019).

The three primary HNA approaches applicable for endeavouring the healthcare requirement in this assessment are –

Epidemiological: This approach is the old traditional public health need assessment approach which describes the health care requirements in regards with the specific health issues with the help of analysing the evidences and estimating those evidences & prevalence and including some other surrogates of the health impacts so that the expected results can be derived from the studies that are being carried out among the population either locally or nationally. The primary strength of this approach is that this can be performed in both prospectively and retrospectively to obtain the absolute risk and it can study many other diseases and their rare risk factors also at a time (biomedcentral.com, 2017). Though one of the limitation is the investigators have no control over the exposures and population when studies.

Corporate: In this approach, there is systematic collection of the views and information knowledge of all the informants involved in the healthcare needs and services. All the collected valuable information are sometimes available from the service providing clinicians, healthcare authority staff members, general practitioners and also from the users of those services. One major weakness of this approach is that it supports the stable or mild health care conditions of the population only (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, 2017). And a strength which makes it approvable is that it is definitive and exploratory in is nature which gives clarifications on all the theories accompanied by the informants.

Comparative: The comparative approach to HNA, is contrasting from the both other approaches as the services that are received from the population in only one area. All the data and gathered information are based on a specific population and the services provided too them. One weakness that drives this approach little back is that the population for collecting the health care services and needs information is limited up to a specific area which restricts its functions (sciencedirect.com, 2020). And to contrast that one strength possessed by this approach is the diagnosis of the specific client’s needs, issues and interventions has made easy.

Application of the approaches in Diabetes Type 2 among Young Adults & Kids

In case of the type 2 diabetes, the epidemiological approach can be applied as to utilise the old and traditional way to collect evidences and gather information about the population health issue and especially in the kids and young adult age group. It will help in finding out that how much of the young and adults and kids are getting affected with the type 2 diabetes and what are the primary reasons for that. These evidences and information will be a tool to capture the current scenario of health care statistics in UK population and the researchers will also be able to compare them with the past records so that it can be highlighted within the population and the government for gearing up regarding that matter and take quick steps and solutions to control the increasing rate of diabetic kids and young adults (wiley.com, 2018).

The corporate approach in case of diabetes type 2 cases will furnish the healthcare requirements and needs and will also allow the surveyors and researchers to understand the views and thoughts of people including the parents, teaching institution faculties (since they are also equally responsible for taking care of the young and children along with their parents & are responsible for ensuring to teach and make them aware about taking care of their own health is how much necessary for their present and future) and the kids & young adults themselves (academic.oup.com, 2017). It will guide to gather what they think of their daily dietary habits and what daily eating routine they follow.

The third approach is the comparative approach will helpful in identifying the healthcare needs and requirements of any specific location or area population for analysis of the health care condition of that age group or population. This approach basically collected all the healthcare services provided to the population in a specifically focused area or region so that the new implementations of the healthcare measures and guides can be done for making people aware about its importance and how much it can affect them as well as their families too and also the whole country (Magliano et al. 2020).

All these three approaches if applied in this case of type 2 diabetes among young adults and kids will benefit in acquired knowledge about the present status so that the future can be made better with a healthy upcoming generation in UK.

Some other HNA approaches

Apart from these three approaches, there are some more approaches also which can be workable in case of this type 2 diabetes among UK young adults and kids. Such of these approaches are as the community profiling approach, health equity audit approach and the health impact assessment approach.

Community Profiling Approach

The community profiling approach says that as a part of the health needs assessment procedure is an effective technique or way that will ensure the gaining of a greater range of understanding of the daily needs and requirements of a significant community or area or region and this approach will also subsequently contribute to make an efficient and effective plan for upgrading the healthcare measures by proper and adequate allocation of all the resources and services regarding this health issue (Lascar et al. 2018). In case of the type 2 diabetes, this approach will identify what are the daily dietary reasons that is causing rise in this heath issue among the chosen population.

Health Equity Audit Approach

The HEA approach is a specific tool that addresses all the inequalities that are happening, focuses on them and also specifies that how fairly all the services and resources can be distributes among the population in regards with the healthcare needs so that everybody can be equally facilitated (hindawi.com, 2018). The primary aim of this approach is not to distribute the resources equally but instead of this it ensures equal rights distribution among the population for equal healthcare.

Health Impact Assessment Approach

The third of these approaches that in the health impact assessment approach focuses on being a means of evidence collection of the policies that are made to protect the healthcare improvements in the population health (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, 2019). In case of the type 2 diabetes, this approach acts as a combination of all the methods and aims to access good health conditions to a specific population through various projects, policies, programmes and guidelines.

After analysing all these above mentioned approaches to the health needs assessment, the best approach for better results can be suggested is the community profiling since in this technique the scanning of the population is done for policy making improvements. The improved polices will ultimately suggest new measures to equal distribution of healthcare resources and services and will create awareness among the parents, teachers and the focused population themselves to take care of their eating habits. Also to add in this, this approach will educate the population that how to take proper care of their health, what foods are good for them, how much nutrition and other components will benefit them and more awareness about the physical activities which is nearly very less among this current young adults and kids. So I can propose that the community profiling approach might work well in this case.

Stages involved in the Diabetes Type 2 Health Needs Assessment

In a health need assessment, there are mainly five basic stages or steps which are must to follow when assessing and health issue need. In this case the assessment of the diabetes type 2 health need assessment can be done by following these below stages:

Stage 1: Initiation

This is the stage where the initiation is started like first the population range or community location or age group is selected for the need assessment like the young adults and kids. The first stage includes the goals and objectives such as making people aware of the risks of bad health, side effects of type 2 diabetes among the kids and young adults, teaching parents; teachers & the target population that how to take care of good health which will be obtained from this need assessment (Wei et al. 2021). Later on in the first stage, the participants of this assessment are decided like a team leader to lead the overall process; a team to actively work on; the primary stakeholders and the policy makers. After this the risks which are involved for creating barricade and the threats are analysed and their solutions. Regarding this assessment, less interest of people and the target population, hesitation in sharing personal heath details and such other reasons could be the barriers. The needed resources like meeting and interview locations, time, accessing the attention of the population, accessing the data, skills required and mainly funding are figured out. And lastly the monitoring is done to keep the assessment on track (sciencedirect.com, 2020).

Stage 2: Identifying the priorities

The second stage has component in itself like the population profiling where the scanning and scrutiny of the population who needs this assessment is searched and the data regarding that specific population is collected. After that the other component is noting the views, beliefs and thoughts of the population and their regarding community about the diabetes type 2 and its associated pros and cons of this issue. Basically the perception of the population is noted down (Courtenay et al. 2018). Later on the present health conditions of the target population and the determinant factors that affect the health conditions of the same are identified so that they can be remitted through this need assessment.

Stage 3: Assessing the priority actions of the issue

In this stage the action plan is prepared where what necessary measures can be taken to reduce or resolve the increasing diabetes type 2 rate among young adults and kids. This stage clarifies who are being assessed and for why i.e. the reason for preparing this need assessment is conducted are mentioned (sciencedirect.com, 2017). Here in the third stage, the health assessment priorities are et and their effective interventions are brought to light so that they can be tackled.

Stage 4: Planning for the change

The stage four has the activities of planning the action plans with appropriate strategic functions so that the action plan made can work at its best possible way and the expected results can be achieved. This stage four clarifies all the interventional aims of this need assessment so that whoever is accessing this can get a clear view of what is inside. Another strategic formation included in this stage is the risk management strategies, progress monitoring strategies and strategies for the evaluation of the action plan where all the strategies works on their own sections (sciencedirect.com, 2018).

Stage 5: Reviewing the action plan

This is the last sage where the monitoring or reviewing of the overall procedure from the initiation to till the strategic moves is performed. This last stage is the learning part of the whole process that how the work is implemented, what results are achieved and comparing it with the expected results, acquiring the impacts of conducting this need assessment and from the achieved results figuring out the priority pints so that next time the focus can be brought on them (bmj.com, 2018). In this stage, how efficient the type 2 diabetes heath need assessment plan was can be analysed so that when the next need assessment is conducted the mistakes can be rectified for better results.

Current Strategies

The current status of the type 2 diabetes young adults and kids is at the rate of nearly about 90 per cent and is rising day by day in UK. The main key cases are more interest in outside junk food, less eating of the healthy food such as nutrients; fruits & vegetable, obesity and over-weight issue due to lack of proportionate physical activities has risen as the major drivers of this rise in number. The UK government have introduced certain intervention programs that offers healthcare awareness and how to attain that to the home based and community based settings (bmj.com, 2018). These programs includes life style changing tips, informal counselling sessions, coaching and all the needed extended support to people for preventing the type 2 diabetes risk in the target population. There are certain standards or guidelines from the UK government regarding the diabetes type 2 health issues and protection which comes under the National Service Framework for diabetes (wiley.com, 2018).

UK government has made possible partnerships with many other healthcare groups like with the Diabetes UK, the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries and the Royal Colleges to support the implementations of the healthcare standards of the National Standard Framework. These partnerships deliver required resources, protect health inequalities, deliver needed strategies, clinical governance and prioritised recommendations (sciencedirect.com, 2020).

National Health Service UK has teamed up with the Local Diabetes Services Advisory Groups (LDSAGs), so that together they can work well for the improvement among the people regarding the diabetes strategic planning for bringing some change through the patient-centred approaches (biomedcentral.com, 2017).

The National Health Service (NHS) UK formulated the Equality Act 2010, under which the rules says that in case of the healthcare diseases such as type 2 diabetes, the person or patient must be given equal environment in all the social places such as workplace environments and educational institutions and in common social gatherings also (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, 2019). It basically protects the individual from any kind of discrimination in public places since diabetes is counted as a disability as like other disabilities.

Recommendation

Despite all these measures, programmes, plans, acts and strategies, there is no visible result in the rate of diabetes patients especially among the young adults and kids. All these action plans are still in their working so there must be introduced and formulated more advanced ways and techniques to educate people about the seriousness of tis health issue and how it can affect not only to the person but also to the whole family in many aspects such as financially due to the treatments procedures and medicinal expenses. In order to open the eyes of people regarding this matter one strategy can work best and that is the real time experience sharing of the already victims of the type 2 diabetes. It is human nature that people only take the reality feedbacks and experiences which they hear and face on their own. So to break the ice, government and the local healthcare authorities should organise some programmes where the people who are suffering from the type 2 diabetes will sit and share their struggle and journey from the initial stage still now. It will make the listeners feel the real struggle which a diabetic person have to do and might impact on the listeners for their awareness. These types of initiatives can somehow help in reducing the increasing rate of young adults and kids diabetes patients which the regular government policies were unable till now. And the upcoming future generation will bring new changes in the healthcare measures being responsible and attentive towards them and for the society also.

Conclusion

The above described assessment declares that n terms of diabetes type 2 in adults and kids, UK government have formulated many policies to make people aware of the healthcare requirements. These have been regulated due to the increasing rate of the diabetes among the kids and young adult population. The primary reasons are like bad diet, lack of physical activity and many more on the list. Despite all these measures, programmes, plans, acts and strategies, there is no visible result in the rate of diabetes patients especially among the young adults and kids. There are some approaches like the Community Profiling approach, Corporate approach, Health Equity Audit approach, Health Impact Assessment approach, Comparative approach & Epidemiological approach to endeavouring the healthcare requirement of the need assessment that is detailed here regarding the diabetes type 2 disease. The five basic stages that is highlighted above must be followed to accomplish a good need assessment plan. And all these steps are must be followed accordingly to achieve the expected result in any topic whether diabetes type 2 or any other healthcare issue. Lastly it can be concluded that the recommendations suggested in this assessment if applied can give expected positive results for a better future.

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