Description of the problem.

The ultimate goal of the maternal, infant and child health is to escalate the well-being of infants, children, and their families, as well as improving their health. The government of the United States of America has set it maternal, infant and child health as a priority as it is an essential step towards improving public health. When the infants and children are in good shape and health, it is a guarantee that the future generation will be healthy too. The well-being of the next generation is important as it will help the health practitioners to predict the problems and the pattern of the health problems in the future.

When one talks about maternal, infant and child health, they cannot go without putting into limelight the wide range of problems that come in handy with the said targets. The goals are also about health behaviors and all indicators of a health system that affects the well-being and health of infants, children and their families. The quality of the healthcare is also a factor to look into when dealing with the problem at hand on the maternal, infant and child health. When dealing with the issue of maternal well-being, there are numerous conditions that the healthcare system focuses on to help curb them.

Conditions and diseases that pregnant women are most susceptible to include heart diseases and hypertension, genetic conditions, malnutrition, diabetes, overweight problems, sexually transmitted infections and drug and substance abuse. Dealing with these conditions and diseases in pregnant women will in turn help to reduce the child mortality rate. The risks that the unborn child is likely to suffer from and mortality rates are the problems that the government want is dealing with in respect to this healthcare program. The health mentioned above risks in pregnant women may go as far as causing deformities in children, which would render their lives miserable in their future lives.

The statistics of affected people.

The United States of America is currently doing badly when it comes to dealing with maternal, infant and child healthcare in comparison to the other developed countries in the world. The government of the United States spends more than any other country in the world on this program and participates religiously in the Millennium Development Goals. Despite this effort, the maternal and infant mortality have been on a constant rise from 1996 to date, with 17 deaths per 10,000 live births in 1996 to 26 deaths per 10,000 livebirths currently. It is good to note that even if the maternal mortality rates have been on the rise in the United States, the same has been on the decrease globally, with a 44% decrease since 1996 to date.

The United States has not been doing so well in the reduction of maternal and infant mortality. This track record is factual, even after having set it as a national goal and speeding towards the Healthy People 2020 goal. Healthy People 2020 is a government goal to decrease the number of maternal mortalities in the county by 10% by the year 2020. The most noticeable trend and disparity in maternal and child mortalities in the United States is race defined. Black women and infants die at a faster rate than white women. For every four maternal deaths in black women, there is only one death of their white counterparts.

This trend has not changed since 2010, where the maternal mortality rate in black women was 42 deaths per 10,000 live births while the same was 12 deaths per 10,000 live births in white women. The native Americans and American Indians have almost twice as many maternal death rates as white women. Black women are said to have poor access to quality healthcare in comparison to the whites and native American. The maternal mortality rates in black women have been contributed to by the racial discrimination that most experience, racial abuse, and disrespect. These women end up having perinatal problems and infants of low weight than required.

Impact of economics within the healthcare system.

Healthcare system has always been a beehive of economic activities as people invest their capital and time in it. People trade for it from each other, which makes it amenable for economic analysis. It is important that people understand its demand, supply, price and how they interrelate in so far as the healthcare system is concerned, together with its impacts. Other than focusing on the interrelation between the supply and demand, economics is also interested in the behavior of suppliers and the effect of need for healthcare.

It is an essential fact that economics is there to improve healthcare. One should note that even if economics seems to be performing better in capitalist states than socialist states, it still has a significant role to play even in those other states. For instance, the idea of cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit are concepts that are used greatly in socialist countries that capitalist counterparts. So, it is very true to say that economics has a very large impact to play in the field of the healthcare system.

Politics and maternal, infant and child health.

It is widely acknowledged that political will plays a crucial role in agenda-setting and the success or failure of any intervention. Any issue becomes a legislative priority as a result of many complex processes. Different health issues and initiatives vary in the extent to which political leaders and policymakers prioritize them. Political priority is defined as the degree to which political leaders actively pay attention to an issue, the political systems lead to policies and programs that address the problem, and these programs are supported by financial, technical and human resources.

Since politics plays a critical role in health affairs, it becomes very important to understand the priorities of the political agenda in health and the factors associated with it. There have been efforts to assess the political prioritization of safe motherhood at the national level in different countries. In the American federal system, the sub-national level is particularly important because health is a state subject under the distribution of powers between the central and the state governments and states play a strong role in the provision of health services.

Ethical issues and maternal healthcare.

Indigenous people all over the world are historically subjugated, seceded and discriminated, which is explicitly and implicitly affecting their health status also. Studies reveal that indigenous and ethnic populations experience more health-related problems and inequalities, as compared to their mainstream populations. Indigenous people or ethnic minorities are adversely affected by reproductive health problems in places where maternal mortality and infant mortality rates are relatively higher. By and large, indigenous peoples experience more mortality relative to non-indigenous peoples. More specifically, Maternal mortality rates are significantly higher among vulnerable groups, particularly among the indigenous, ethnic or other minorities groups.

Community resources.

Medical interventions that occur in communities can be classified as three categories: primary healthcare secondary healthcare and tertiary healthcare. Each class focuses on a different level and approaches towards the community or population group. In the United States, community health is rooted in primary healthcare achievements. Primary healthcare programs aim to reduce risk factors. And increase health promotion and prevention. Secondary healthcare is related to hospital care where acute care is administered in a setting. Tertiary healthcare refers to highly specialized care usually involving disease or disability management.

Level of prevention.

The community programs and resources have been equipped with enough funds to prevent the maternal, infant and child mortality. Despite the US doing poorly in maintaining the healthcare of the infants and mothers’ trend-wise, the government still invests a lot of money in the same programs. The department of health has built hospitals and centers with modernized equipment to prevent the diseases and conditions that occur during pregnancy and childbirth. For these reasons, therefore, it is evident that the government’s level of prevention is commendable despite the levels of maternal deaths being on the rise.

Wellness plan.

Promoting wellness among pregnant mothers and young children is one big step into ensuring that these cases of maternal mortality go down to the least levels. One of the steps to achieve the wellness plan is through mass education on the need to undertake regular tests and checkups to ascertain the well-being of pregnant mothers and their children. It is paramount that campaigns be conducted to educate the mothers on good eating habits and to refrain from foods that may bring complications to them. Providing counseling to mothers who are pregnant is a good step to ensure that they are not stressed, hence delivering healthy babies.

Nursing theorist. (Dorothea Orem, self-care deficit)

In the Dorothea Orem Self Care Deficit Nursing Theory, the role of a nurse is to fill in the gaps of care that an individual cannot provide for themselves. Orem theorizes that individuals will initiate and perform their self-care activities regularly so that their overall health and well-being can be maximized.

It is only when an individual can no longer care for themselves that they will seek out professional care from a provider, such as a nurse. This means nursing is more of a reactive than proactive action in the eyes of Orem. Only when a person cannot care continuously for themselves is it appropriate for a nurse to assist. Per Dorothea, nurses have the duty and responsibility of helping the patients to care for themselves. The nurses may do so by being in immediate service to the patients and guiding the patients on their actions.