TB Community Assignment

[Name of the institute]TB Community Assignment

Health Literacy

Health literacy is an empowerment strategy that enables people to take control and accept accountability of their health (Wilson, 2008). Health literacy does not only entail providing information about health to individuals, instead it is an effort to translate information into healthy behaviors (Keleher, Parker, Abdulwadud, Francis, Segal, & Dalziel, 2007). Due to the numerous barriers faced by refugee populations there is an increasing need to promote health literacy within this particular group. Leung and Chang (2008) argue that refugees and other immigrants often present with a variety of physical and emotional problems, caused by their lived experiences, which can require a variety of solutions to overcome these problems (Leung and Chang, 2008). Clinical manifestations of these problems may vary amongst individual refugees, with individual refugees having different opinions as to the source, and type of their problems. Additionally, it can be difficult to communicate with refugees given the language differences and the emotional problems they suffer. Mancuso (2011) explains that this has generally resulted in problems of health literacy amongst refugees and therefore amplifies the importance of educating refugees as to the significance of health literacy (Mancuso, 2011). Nurses can play their important role by taking part in assessing the health literacy level of overall community. Nurses can arrange these fairs in educational institutes and invite elderly and refugees because such people are more likely to have less health literacy. As refugees come from another area they may face difficulty of language acquisition hence remain unable to comprehend the direction of taking medicine. Nurses together of different healthcare facilities can run the survey to gauge the health literacy of the members of the community and then they can design the program to improve the health literacy of the member of the community (Harris and Roussel, 2010).

Empowerment

There is a difference between practicing health empowerment at individual level and empowerment at community level. Individual empowerment means the decisions that an individual takes that directly affects his or her health and the degree of control that an individual has on his or her life. Community health empowerment means to gain control over the detriments of the health all the members of the community take collective actions and take decisions in collaboration (Definitionofwellness.com, 2012).

Refugees might live with poor health simply as a result of their lack of understanding of the health care system and their lack of knowledge of how to access the health care system. Under this situation, tuberculosis can, unfortunately flourish, meaning that it is important to promote health via community health principles such as empowerment. As Johnston, Allotey, Mulholland and Markovic (2009) argue, powerlessness goes hand in hand with a lack of empowerment, leading to a failure to access available health care services, thus leading to an overall decrease in refugees' health status (Johnston et al, 2009). Macq, Torfoss and Getahun (2007) acknowledge how empowerment interventions can lead to refugees feeling more able to access health services when they have a concern, ...