Principles and practice of disaster relief: Lessons from Haiti. Mount Sinai Journal of Medicine, 78, 306-318. DOI:10.1002/msj.20251

Community Teaching Plan- Teaching Experience Paper

The United States is facing multiple costly competing social and health challenges that require immediate solutions if the country is to achieve sustainable social and economic progress from the current trends. The U.S. healthcare system, from the national to the local level, has become expensive and inaccessible to certain population groups. This is at a time when the population is facing the highest prevalence of chronic diseases, especially diabetes and related complications and diseases. The growing incidence rates for diabetes, disparities in health access, and lifestyle trends that exacerbate the risk of developing diabetes are predictive of an incoming health disaster and create the need for focused healthcare solutions. According to evidence, involving populations at the local community levels in mitigating and preventing disasters is essential for successful disaster management (Benjamin et al., 2011). Arguably, community-level and community-centered health solutions have the potential to solve health issues and challenges at the national level. Evidence further shows that structural interventions focused on individual and interpersonal factors can help address multilevel structural and social determinants that impact social and health equity (Brown et al., 2019). This article presents a summary of a community teaching plan focused on promoting diabetes health literacy and accessibility to diabetes care with a focus on the Royal Palm Beach Community. The summary evaluates the rationale for focusing on diabetes, teaching experience, and the community response to the teaching.

Summary of Teaching Plan

The teaching plan is based on insights from an interview with Simeon Rosny, a Royal Palm Beach Medical Group representative. The interview aimed to identify health challenges that were of concern to the local Royal Palm Beach Medical community. An exploratory community assessment was also conducted to further identify major challenges. The community assessment focused on identifying the community’s health and socioeconomic status, availability and access to health amenities, the community’s health concerns, and issues that are lacking and can be improved through health promotion. Major challenges and issues of concern identified were related to diabetes within the community, including access to care, insurance, and available preventive and management opportunities.

The main goals of the teaching were to provide diabetes education with a focus on approaches to adopting and sustaining healthy behaviors such as healthy eating habits, improved physical activity, reduced alcohol and tobacco use, and self-care and medication adherence strategies. Other objectives of the teaching plan are to improve the community’s knowledge of available diabetes support resources for the community and individuals. These teaching goals were aligned with Healthy People 2030’s objectives on diabetes, specifically on the HP2030 objective to improve access to formal diabetes education and equitable access to diabetes care, such as access to insulin and other medication. The teaching plan’s goals were also guided by Alma Ata’s Health for All Global Initiatives, which majorly focus on the use of health promotion and the primary prevention of diseases as an evidence-based approach towards offering sustainable solutions to community health problems. Additionally, the teaching plan’s goals were designed to further align with Alma Ata’s Health for All Global Initiatives, focused on overcoming barriers to access to primary healthcare, including preventing, curative, and rehabilitative care such as health literacy, resistance to change, and other socioeconomic barriers of healthcare access.

Subsequently, the teaching plan was guided by the theoretical framework provided by Albert Bandura’s Social cognitive theory (SCT). Bandura’s SCT helped set SMART community health education and healthy behavior goals. The SCT also guides on how to initiate and sustain motivation to achieve goals such as performing physical activities (Schunk & DiBenedetto, 2020). Bandura’s SCT further understands causal relations among beliefs, sociocultural factors, and outcome expectations with physical activity that influence efficacy beliefs and adherence to behavioral change goals (Beauchamp et al., 2019).

Epidemiological Rationale for Topic

The decision to focus the teaching plan on diabetes was based on the assessment of the community during the interview, as well as the review of diabetes epidemiological data at the national level and community assessment data from the local community and Palm Beach. Diabetes data presented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2022) shows that as of 2019, diabetes at