Reference no: EM132405725 , Length: word count:300

Assignment -

Create a response to the post.

Discussion Post - Health disparities she may experience related to her pregnancy, such as the risk for preterm labor and the high rate of infant mortality in low-income women.

Our client is at huge disparity risk as we look at her lifestyle below.

Martha Miller is a 32-year-old, African American single mother living in a midsize city. She has three children from previous relationships. Her partner is Mick, a 38-year-old White man who lives with her, and who is unemployed. Her oldest child is 8 years of age, she has a 4-year-old, and her youngest is 17 months. She works as a hotel housekeeper from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. and at a fast-food restaurant from 6 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. She has limited time home with her children, only seeing them briefly after her first job, and then again in the morning before work. She is overweight with a body mass index of 32, has mild hypertension, and had a second A1c level of 6.4 for which you prescribed Metformin 500 mg twice a day during her last clinic visit 6 months ago. At that visit, she saw a dietitian for dietary counseling, and you spoke with her about developing a plan to get 150 minutes of exercise weekly.

She has not been back to see you despite repeated calls to her cell phone, a number that changes about every 8 to 10 months. She finally came into clinic last week, and you have determined that she is 20 weeks pregnant. You are concerned about the effectiveness of her medication, her very stressful life, and lack of follow-up as problems that can affect her health and that of her baby.

Health disparities our client is lacking the most is obtaining screening and monitoring in her current pregnancy. African American women report higher stress levels and less access to pre- and postnatal resources. Perinatal racial disparities remain an elusive problem in the United States according to nursing research (Dailey DE. ,2009). African American women experience the highest rate of low-birth-weight deliveries. Understanding the factors contributing to infant birth weight is crucial to unraveling existing perinatal racial disparities. Pregnancy and Childbirth state there are strategies used by healthcare providers to identify high-risk pregnancies so that health care providers can target and rationalize treatment and follow-up care (Bhutta, Z. A.,2009). Monitoring fetal well-being in both low- and high-risk pregnancies has shown great maternal and fetus outcomes. The use of many of these techniques is controversial and their ability to detect fetal compromise often unknown. Theoretically, appropriate management of maternal and fetal risk factors and complications that are detected in pregnancy and labor could prevent a large proportion of the world's 3.2 million estimated annual stillbirths, as well as minimize maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality. Our client has chronic stress of poverty and racial dilemmas of inter-racial dating has been shown to have a deleterious effect on health outcomes and is linked to their persistent maternal health disparities.

References -

Dailey DE. (2009). Social stressors and strengths as predictors of infant birth weight in low-income African American women. Nursing Research, 58(5), 340-347.

Haws RA, Yakoob MY, Soomro T, Menezes EV, Darmstadt GL, Bhutta ZA, ... Bhutta, Z. A. (2009). Reducing stillbirths: screening and monitoring during pregnancy and labour. BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth, 9, S5.