Objectives for the project
- To raise awareness on chronic diseases among immigrants from Africa living in the Metropolitan area
- To provide guidance on cholesterol causes, prevention, and management
- To develop trust among immigrants on Finnish health care system and information provided by health care professional
- To guide immigrant clients on the use of digital health services and applications in promoting own health
Objectives for the team
- To learn more about chronic diseases amongst immigrants
- To improve teamwork with nursing students from different immigrant backgrounds
- To be able to speak in front of people
- To be able to provide guidance in nursing settings
In order for this project to thrive, we had to consider the risk involved. We use the SWOT analysis to minimize our risk.
- Strength - Our group had good teamwork and cooperation towards the project at hand. There was funding, lecture materials, and free hands to create the project.
- Weakness - It was difficulty in finding convenient meeting times because some members have part-time work as well as mothers with small children
- Opportunities - Having AFAES as our collaborating partner was an opportunity for us
- Threat - The invited participants did not show up and our plan did not go as planned. Unforeseen contingences.
Background of the project
Chronic diseases are huge global public health problem. Chronic diseases are slow-growing, long-term, and often incurable. Chronic disease is one of the major causes of death, about 70% and disability worldwide. According to THL (2022), chronic diseases are important public health issues and have become the leading causes of premature death in Finland. They cause great suffering to humans and require ongoing medical attention. They also limit activities of daily living and strain the health care systems. Chronic diseases include heart diseases, strokes, cancer, chronic respiratory and kidney diseases, diabetes, asthma, and others. Heart diseases, cancer, diabetes, and respiratory diseases account for more than 60% of these deaths worldwide. It was previously believed that chronic diseases are a disease of the elderly people but about a third of people who die of chronic diseases are under the age of 60.
Even though healthy lifestyle counselling is equally provided by Finnish primary health care to all the people living in Finland, it follows a relatively standard approach designed for the major Finnish population and may not regard the cultural and linguistic diversity of immigrants (Maliheh et al., 2022). The project is carried out in cooperation with AFAES to reach African and Middle Eastern immigrants, to provide guidance on cholesterol diseases and causes, and to share information regarding healthy lifestyles to prevent from this disease.
Various chronic diseases that are widespread in Finland includes cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, asthma and allergies, chronic respiratory diseases, cancer, memory disorders, musculoskeletal diseases, and mental disorders. Several previous studies have recognized immigration as a global health challenge and immigrants possess higher risk of developing chronic diseases. There are previous studies that have also confirmed immigrants to have high incidence of diabetes at an early age in comparison to the native population, and the risk of diabetes increases with years of residence in the host country (Maliheh et al., 2022).
In Finland, the immigration rate is increasing every year. As per a study by city of Helsinki in 2019, the two-third of the population growth in Helsinki in 2017-2018 was solely due to immigration. The number of residents in Helsinki with mother tongue other than Finnish and Swedish exceeded by more than 100,000 during 2018 which is 15.7% of the entire population of the city. More than a quarter of total Finland’s immigrants live in Helsinki whereas almost half of all immigrants of Finland live in Helsinki Metropolitan area. These immigrants might have different customs, cultures, and religions as per their country of origin which directly affects their way of lifestyles.
It is always important to live a healthy lifestyle to prevent from many chronic diseases. According to THL, (2022), smoking is common among the men with Russian and Estonian backgrounds as well as from Middle East and North African countries. However, women from Middle East and African countries engage rarely in physical activity. THL further mentioned that people with African background are found to consume less vegetables, fruits, and berries. A study by Golzarand et al. in 2012 found that the proportion of energy derived from meat and vegetables in Middle East and North Africa has increased significantly while that from cereals has decreased significantly. The study further suggested the need for tailored nutritional education to encourage healthy eating for prevention of chronic disease in these countries.
A description of the implementation
The group agreed with AFAES to implement the project on the 15.04.2022. In order for the project at hand to be successful, each member of the group was assigned to a particular task.
As nursing students from Laurea, on this day our plan was to give guidance on healthy nutrition and measure the cholesterol of personnel and the client of the AFAES organization which is based in Helsinki. On that day as a group, we started to work on our plan. The first goal for our plan was to present our project to the audience but for technical reasons we couldn’t. Despite that, we came up with the solution of explaining orally to the client the importance of taking care of your health before our body signals us. We have shown how to measure cholesterol and how to interpret different levels of it in the body.
One of the disadvantages was that the background of the people that were there was from Finland, but ideally, would that target group would be from Africa as they were our target. The environment for the implementation wasn’t adequate especially for presenting important information and giving guidance even though our team was maximally engaged, and every team member taught all interested participants what an ideal healthy diet and its benefits are.
A clear demonstration of this healthy culture was also the preparation of smoothies when we used a variety of fruits and greens. The participants enjoyed and tasted the healthy juice and were convinced that also from bio and natural food can be produced a tasty and healthy portion. From the conversations that we had, we reached the conclusion that people lack information about what is a healthy diet and what kind of combination, and how much of each food they need to add to their daily diet. To increase the number of our audience we used the help of social media and cooperated with the group Foreigners in Finland, where we shared a live video of our work. We learn that everything may not always go according to plan, and we should have a plan B. This was a good experience, and we feel that we have achieved our goals. Foreigners in Finland -ryhmän kanssa, jossa jaoimme live-videon työstämme. Opimme, että kaikki ei välttämättä mene aina suunnitelmien mukaan ja meillä pitäisi olla suunnitelma B. Tämä oli hyvä kokemus ja koemme, että olemme saavuttaneet tavoitteemme.
