Case Study Choice #4: Unit 4, Chapters 14-17
Introduction: In this unit the textbook focused on the community as client. Assessing the community provides the foundation to understanding the community of care giving. Chapter 14 addresses the theoretical basis of community health nursing. Next, the nursing process is applied to the community as the client. The last two chapters explored two dramatic issues: going beyond our borders to encompass the health and well-being of the global community, and the crises associated with disasters and terrorism.
The Case: The health of other nations can affect the health of our own in a matter of hours. This may be the selfish reason to be concerned about the health of other nations, but in many countries, people are struggling just to survive—to have food to eat, to have clean water to drink, and to keep themselves and their children free of diseases that can and do kill. Global Health and International Community Health Nursing are described in Chapter 16. Explore the following questions.
1. Look at a list of the leading causes of death in third-world or emerging countries by using the following websites: World Health Organization (WHO), http://www.who.org – PanAmerican Health Organization, http://www.paho.org or the International Red Cross http://www.redcross.org
a. Which diseases occur in the United States, but are not on our “leading causes of death” list?
b. Are there diseases that you have never heard of among the leading causes?
c. How many of the causes are considered directly related to socioeconomic and political factors?
d. Are you surprised? Why or why not?
2. If you were working as a community health nurse with the children in a World Health Organization sponsored village in sub-Saharan Africa…(Consider material presented in Chapters 5, 13, and 16):
a. In addition to healthcare services you provide, what additional services for children might you assess the community for?
b. Identify two or three additional services.
c. What would you need to consider before beginning to plan to provide one of these services?

Textbook: Allender, J.A., Rector, C., & Warner, K.D. (2014). Community health nursing: Promoting and protecting the public’s health (8th ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott, Williams, and Wilkins. [ISBN: 978-1-60913-688-8]