Question

What is the difference between a group "at risk" for poor health and a group considered a "vulnerable" population? Provide an example of an "at risk" or "vulnerable population" group in the United States and one in another country (or immigrants within the United States).

Explain why members of these groups cannot advocate for themselves or why advocating for these groups would be beneficial.

What would you advocate for?

Identify ethical issues that need to be addressed when working with these individuals.

Provide information about the selected "at risk" group. How many individuals fall into this group and what are some issues they face.

Answer 1

The population at risk is an important concept in epidemiology because it focuses on groups at risk for disease rather than on individuals. The term is applied to all those to whomever it happened or not. This group is a potential developer of the adverse health conditions.

Examples:

• If we are determining the rate of accidents for a town, the population at risk, is all the people in the town.
• Adults with overweight and hypertensive are all at risk of cardiovascular diseases.
• In case of food poisoning, the people who are all ate the food are at risk.

The vulnerable group is those who develop health-related problem and experience difficulty in accessing health care services and also shows poor health outcomes. Generally, the elderly people, pregnant woman, malnourished, children, homeless people, mentally ill, are considered as vulnerable groups.

Examples:

• Older adults with increased dependency on others and poor health impairment.
• people with chronic disease and less ability to cope up.
• withdrawn from the job and then having an insecure life.
• People with limited resources to have a healthy living environment.
• Immigrants who have less access to health services.

In Simple people with exposure to disease are risk category, and the people with chronic diseases and inability to have good health services are vulnerable.

Usually, these people would not advocate themselves, because of dismissed or overlooked. They won't obtain proper treatment that leads to adverse conditions. They don't have money to have advanced treatment. Sometimes they resist of changing their lifestyles.

Nurses have the responsibility to advocate for those populations and to protect them. The nurse has to develop an appropriate care plan for solving problems of the vulnerable group. I advocate this vulnerable group to eliminate health disparities and to establish interventions for easy access to health services and make them live easier.

Some of the ethical issues include the need for research with the increased risk of health problems with age and availability of health services. The lack of physician and other medical professionals is another issue. Elderly with lack of health insurance and health disparities are the ethical issues to be addressed in caring for these groups.

Smoking people are at greater risk of heart disease when compared to non-smoking people. Because the smoking doubles the risk of heart disease. It leads to more than 2.4 million annual deaths in the U.S. It increases the relative risk of COPD and lung cancer. It also leads to CVD, peripheral vascular disease, stroke, and aneurysm.