community service learning project
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Service Learning Project
Community Health Nursing
Empire State College
Sherry Caiozzo
The Rota Care free clinic in Uniondale, New York provides free health care and medications for indignant
people. The communities that it serves on a regular basis consist primarily of Hispanic/Latino’s as well as
Caribbean African Americans. The communities that I have chosen to gear my learning project were
geared toward the Hispanic/Latino community. Hispanic/Latinos have a higher risk for diabetes and
diabetes than the general population. 10.4 % of Hispanics/Latinos have diabetes. (NDEP) Rota Care
is the only contact with health care that many of these people have. With a chronic condition
such as diabetes, that requires attention to detail and daily control, you can imagine how
daunting and frightening if can be for people who often do not speak English and are in a
different country working hand to mouth.
The Rota Care waiting room is a prime place to start educating the patients at Rota Care. The
patients wait there to be called by the nurse, and then the Health Practitioner, and then again
for Pharmacy to get their medication. They spend a lot of time waiting. The walls were empty
light colored blank walls with no information that could provide the patients with valuable
opportunities for learning something about their disease or risks for disease. I created posters
in both English and Spanish that focused on diabetes. Using a health promotion model to guide
the creation of the posters, it allowed myself as the nurse to identify factors involved in this
health promotion situation and design a tool to assist in addressing some of these issues. Three
strategies for health promotion that affect goal accomplishment are: empowerment, social
marketing, and health education. (Clark) The posters utilized a friendly, casual approach, meant
entice the reader to read. I based one set of posters around the idea of “Did you know……?”
This idea was created from the experience that I have had with some of the patients who
lacked some basic fundamental principles of diabetes. It highlights risk factors and
complications of diabetes, basic anatomy, the differences of Diabetes type 1 & 2 and
treatments for both. Then I highlighted the positive, which was listed under the heading “Did
you know there is good news??!!” This was designed to help empower the patient with
diabetes who may or may not be struggling with daily diabetic requirements and also as
preventative for those who are at risk for diabetes to take caution as to how they live their life.
Smiling Hispanic/Latino and African American families were used in the illustrations to help
patients to identify with.
The second sets of posters were titled “You’re a Diabetic… Now What? What Can I Eat? Take
Control!!!
The posters were created from a perspective of the patient. Validating some of their feelings of
frustration and anxiety over diagnosis of diabetes and empowering them to take control over
their disease. The poster focused on nutrition. The poster discussed different types of
carbohydrates (starches, fiber, and sugar). It discussed different types of fats both healthy and
unhealthy fats. It illustrated a food label and what to look for when reading it. The poster
contained some information about alcohol consumption. Again Hispanic/Latinos were
illustrated as well as healthy foods. I think that this lends supports the social marketing aspect
of strategies for health promotion.
References:Clark, Mary Jo. Community Health Nursing. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 2008.
NDEP. "The Diabetes Epidemic Among Hispanics/Latinos." December 2009. 16 December 2011. <http://ndep.nih.gov/media/FS_HispLatino_Eng.pdf>.