The Drug and Substance Abuse among the Young Adults and the Youth in Amarillo, Texas, Randall County

The Drug and Substance Abuse among the Young Adults and the Youth in Amarillo, Texas, Randall County

The youth and young people are known to have minimized health-seeking behaviors due to secondary factors such as access to online medical consultancy, lack of stable health insurance covers, fear of confidentiality, and reduced disease prevalence among these groups. These factors propagate but do not justify the reduced health-seeking behaviors of youths and young adults (Tran & Silvestri-Elmore, 2020). This demographic is faced with activities that can jeopardize their health. These activities include the menace of drug and substance abuse, engaging in unhealthy and irresponsible sexual behaviors, and also leading an unhealthy lifestyle. These behaviors result from peer influence, lack of structured activities, and other economic activities that can lead to addiction, such as drug experimentation.

In response to this assignment, the focus will be on the menace of drug and substance abuse among the youth and young adults of Amarillo, Texas, Randall County. This problem requires a multi-dimensional approach to involve the collective society at large in addressing this problem. All key stakeholders and team players in the upbringing and guidance of the youths and the young adults should be involved in this activity. For instance, organizations such as schools, hospitals, healthcare providers such as psychologists, and parents are among the key stakeholders to be involved.

Population-Centered Best Practice Model

There are many approaches known and proven to effectively mitigate the risk of drug and substance abuse among youth and young adults. Among them are the Community That Care (CTC) and the Icelandic Model. I will discuss the Icelandic Model, whose intention is to emphasize involving parents in activities tailored towards the well-being of the youth. Also, this model recommends supervised and structured activities for youths and young adults, which will draw their attention away from drug and substance abuse. The self-motivated nature of the population of interest justifies the selection of this method. In this discussion, we will delve into how this model will be applied to tackling factors contributing to the vulnerability of youths and young adults to drug and substance abuse. In addition, we will discuss the relevant health outcomes based on the intervention wheel model and how these strategies positively influence the overall health of the youths and young adults.

Factors Contributing to the Vulnerability of Youth and Young Adults

Many factors compel youths and young adults to substance use and drug abuse. These factors include peer pressure and social influence, lack of supervised activities, family dynamics and parental supervision, socioeconomic factors, and Mental health issues. To begin with, peer pressure and social influence adolescents and young adults are particularly susceptible to peer pressure, which can lead to experimentation with drugs (Alhammad et al., 2022). Peer influence may emanate from the adverts that are on social platforms to which young adults and youths are exposed. Secondly, susceptibility can emerge from a lack of supervised activities in communities, such as limited extracurricular activities. As a result, the youth in these communities may turn to drugs in an attempt to seek recreation for themselves. Thirdly, family dynamics and parental supervision are other factors predisposing the youths to drug and substance abuse. For instance, when parental supervision and guidance are inconsistent, the youths may end up being carried away by risky behaviors such as drug use. The fourth risk factor for drug abuse and substance abuse is the socioeconomic factors such the economic instability, poverty, and limited access to educational and employment opportunities, which demotivate youths and young adults who turn to seek leverage from drugs. Lastly, mental health issues among youths may lead them to indulge in the menace of drug abuse and substance use in an attempt to seek a solution to their problems.

Addressing the Needs of Youths and Young Adults

To address the needs of these members of the population, the primary focus is to improve guidance and provide structured activities for youth empowerment. Accordingly, to accomplish these functions, the Icelandic model is used to emphasize community and parental engagement, where parents are actively involved in the lives of their children. Notably, this model helps encourage regular communication, monitoring, and setting clear expectations regarding substance use (Kristjansson et al., 2019). Moreover, engaging activities reduce the risk of exposure to drug and substance use by fostering responsible parenting and guidance. Secondly, providing structured activities for the youths and the young adults significantly mitigates the risk of drug abuse and substance use. In addition, this approach helps reduce boredom and lack of structured activities by providing healthy and engaging activities that substitute drug and substance use.

Expected Health Outcomes in Regard to the Intervention Wheel

The interventions are aimed at achieving the primary goal of reducing the risk of drug and substance abuse among the members of the community. These interventions revolve around informed decision-making and healthier lifestyle choices, a supportive environment to raise a cohesive community in response to drug abuse, and ensuring individuals’ needs are comprehensively addressed (Liu et al., 2023). Some of the interventions include offering health education, which will inform the decision-making process of the young adults and the youths. Secondly, a community organization would solicit resources to support the programs to create a supportive environment for a cohesive community to reduce the risks of drug and substance abuse among youths. Lastly, to ensure proper case management, Liu et al. (2023) support that there is a need to take a collaborative approach to give mental health services, social services, and economic support to the youths and young adults.

References

Alhammad, M., Aljedani, R., Alsaleh, M., Atyia, N., Alsmakh, M., Alfaraj, A., Alkhunaizi, A., Alwabari, J., & Alzaidi, M. (2022). Family, individual, and other risk factors contributing to risk of substance abuse in young adults: A narrative review. Cureus, 14(12). https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.32316

Kristjansson, A. L., Mann, M. J., Sigfusson, J., Thorisdottir, I. E., Allegrante, J. P., & Sigfusdottir, I. D. (2019). Implementing the Icelandic model for preventing adolescent substance use. Health Promotion Practice, 21(1), 70–79. https://doi.org/10.1177/1524839919849033

Liu, X.-Q., Guo, Y.-X., & Wang, X. (2023). Delivering substance use prevention interventions for adolescents in educational settings: A scoping review. World Journal of Psychiatry, 13(7), 409–422. https://doi.org/10.5498/wjp.v13.i7.409

Tran, D.-M. T., & Silvestri-Elmore, A. (2020). Healthcare-seeking behaviours in college students and young adults: A review. Journal of Research in Nursing, 26(4), 174498712095159. https://doi.org/10.1177/1744987120951594

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Evidence-based practice is the expected standard when caring for individual patients across the healthcare continuum. The same is true regarding population-focused practice. With a growing body of knowledge regarding evidence-based population-focused interventions, the health of populations can be strengthened. As healthcare dollars continue to shrink, planning for evidence-based interventions is more important than ever, especially for at-risk populations already experiencing health disparities.
Additionally, you will explore various resources regarding evidence-based, population-focused strategies currently used to promote the health of aggregates.

Drug and Substance Abuse among the Young Adults and the Youth

Upon successful completion of the course material, you will be able to:
• Discriminate between the various categories of population-focused interventions.
• Determine evidence-based strategies to improve the health status and eliminate health disparities of at-risk populations.
Background Information
As you proceed with the assigned readings, please take note that the Intervention Wheel described in Chapter 9 of the Public Health Nursing: Population-centered Health Care in the Community textbook is a framework describing the standard categories of population-focused interventions. It is not a service delivery model itself, but rather serves to categorize the types of interventions used in population-focused practice. For example, some categories include surveillance, outreach, policy development and enforcement, collaboration, and so forth. Once you have familiarized yourself with these categories of intervention, you will be able to relate them to specific evidence-based approaches identified in the electronic resources in the assignment.
Instructions
1. Review the appropriate rubric to make sure you understand the criteria for earning your grade.
2. Chapters 10 and 11 in the textbook, Public Health Nursing: Population-centered Health Care in the Community.

3. You may find it helpful to visit the following websites regarding evidence-based, population-focused practice:

a. What Works for Health (Find the section Policy or Program.)
b. View the video, “Tools to Change our World”
4. Prepare to discuss the following prompts:
a. Based upon your reading and community assessment experiences, identify a population-centered best practice model (Policy or Program, not the Intervention Wheel) or evidence-based approach to care that addresses the needs of a selected at-risk population. A best practice model policy or program is an approach to solving a population-centered problem that has been proven to work and can be used to model a similar idea. State your selection.
b. What factors contribute to the vulnerability of the at-risk population you stated?
c. How does the identified best practice model or evidence-based approach address the needs of this at-risk population? Specifically, what are two ways through which health disparities are addressed to improve the health status of this at-risk population?
d. Considering the Intervention Wheel model of population-focused interventions – and considering the evidence-based approaches you investigated through the web resources above, from the 17 categories, select three categories of population-focused interventions and describe how each would augment efforts in your community to improve population health outcomes for this at-risk population. Explain your selections.
5. Research and select at least two current scholarly sources to support your explanations and insights. OCLS resources are Q Search