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>.