Capella 4060 Assessment 2

Assessment 2: Community Resources

Name:

Capella University

FPX-NURS 4060: Practicing in the Community to Improve Population Health

Prof. Name:

Date

American Red Cross: A Community Resource

The community resource I chose to address in this assessment is American Red Cross (ARC). The American Red Cross is a non-profit humanitarian organization that helps in emergency crises. It has been working in the service of mankind for 140 years. Ever since, Clara Barton founded this public generosity and altruism-based organization in 1881, it has assisted in a multitude of disastrous events that occurred to the public community. From home fires, hurricanes, and earthquakes to floods, wildfires, and international disasters, American Red Cross is eager in helping all disastrous situations (American Red Cross, 2018).

Mission and Vision of the American Red Cross

American Red Cross (ARC) aims to prevent and lower the human suffering and crises that they confront in disastrous events. Their vision is to gather volunteers and generous donors who are eager to help people in times of chaotic events and provide donations, care, refuge, and hope. Providing these altruistic actions mitigates the health and living problems of the public in need and emergency and improves their health and safety. Some of the main principles that the ARC works on include, assistance based on humanity, unbiasedness, neutrality, unity, universality, independence, and voluntary services. ARC provides human resources to all needy people stuck in an emergency without discriminating or presenting any disparities to any race, color, or nationality and serves one purpose of providing safety to human health and taking their dangers away from them. This is all done through their independent voluntary services of donating blood, providing shelter, preventing risks, and improving emergency crises in every possible way (American Red Cross, 2018).   

Capella 4060 Assessment 2

ARC recently established a sickle cell initiative that aimed to gather more black blood donors to facilitate patients suffering from sickle cell disease and improve their health and safety. As the majority of the population with sick cell disease are African; therefore, blood donations from black people are important in alleviating the suffering of sick cell disease In the US, over 100,000 people are estimated to be sufferers of sick cell disease and need regular blood transfusions for a lifetime (American Red Cross, 2021). This initiative by ARC has made it possible to improve the health and safety of these people who happen to be the victims of this disease. ARC has launched its alliance with big organizations like NAACP and 100 Black Men of America that promotes blood donation opportunities in communities of African-American and thrived in obtaining a large number of Black blood donors to particularly facilitate patients surviving sickle cell disease. ARC has also worked on enhancing the safety of these patients by implementing a safe blood transfusion process and making sick cell trait testing services available with the help of African American donors (American Red Cross, 2021).  

ARC’s Role in Promoting Equal Opportunity and Improving Quality of Life

American Red Cross works on the morals of equity, inclusion, and diversity. It provides equal opportunity in employee selection while collaborating with a diverse range of partners and distributors. The organization in its core values has embedded the provision of equal opportunity regardless of gender, culture, sexual identity, and ethnic background. There are different barriers that become the obstacle to achieve a better quality of life. Social barriers include access to healthcare and education, social discrimination and social support, racism, and gender inequalities. The American Red Cross improves the quality of life for a community by delivering diverse emergency help when chaotic events take place. It provides help to disaster victims by providing them with first-aid care, emergency care treatments, refuge to stay, food to eat, and continuous work for their physical, mental, and emotional well-being which overcomes the social barriers. In Supplier Diversity Program (SDP), ARC attracts different suppliers such as women, minorities, disabled veterans, veterans, and numerous other business enterprise suppliers that depict the communities to which ARC provides its services. This way ARC provides its health and safety services to all communities shunning away social barriers as the suppliers in collaboration with ARC work for diverse communities.

The cultural differences include stigmatization of mental health disorders and culturally  or religiously contingent interpretation of physical symptoms. American Red Cross works in such a way that it overcomes cultural barriers by talking to culturally sensitive people in a manner where they are educated about the specific needs of care and treatment in simple language (Kohlenberger et al., 2019). The economic and physical barriers are information-related barriers such as limited evidence base and difficulties of transferring services research findings and insufficiency of resources and lack of physical personnel to provide the care treatment or services to be used for improving quality of care. ARC with the voluntary funding overcomes this barrier by the financial aid and voluntary nursing staff recruited for humanity services.  It also teaches lifesaving skills so that in times of disastrous events, one can save oneself. It works on collecting, testing, and supplying blood across the nation for patients who happened to bleed immensely in chaotic events. This way ARC helps improve their quality of life. By providing emergency medical services, making counseling sessions, and assisting through financial aid to victims of disastrous events, ARC helps to reduce their sufferings and enhance their quality of life. In teaching life skills, ARC plays an important role in saving and improving a victim’s life. For instance, ARC provides teaching sessions for teaching life skills of practicing cardiopulmonary resuscitation to its volunteers in times of emergency and disaster situations where life needs to be saved. Training life skills to the public enhance active readiness for future unfortunate disastrous events. ARC has also made sure the use of technology in providing and accessing quick disaster reports and providing quick services through the use of mobile applications. The visual situational transmission via technology helps prepare ARC to manage disaster operations in a better way and hence provide increased safety and improved quality of life to disaster victims. Besides, blood donor apps are also useful in ARC in managing blood donations and appointment scheduling for an organized and safe blood transfusion process so that the victim’s safety and quality of life are ensured. ARC also helps recover victims from disasters and promotes, mental health support enhancing the quality of life. This way ARC overcomes the social, cultural, economic, and physical barriers and enhances the quality of life of affected people. (Hassan, 2019).

Impact of Funding Sources, Policy, and Legislation

As the American Red Cross is a non-profit organization and works on the voluntary funding sources provided to them by altruistic volunteers. Volunteers and donor financial aid helps the organization provide emergency aid to the population in need e.g. providing first aid to victims, arranging and supplying blood to victims, providing shelter and food, and mental health recovery programs. Adequate financial funding provides effective means to bring humanitarian services into action for unfortunate events of disasters and chaos.   

Capella 4060 Assessment 2

The American Red Cross works under a Congressional Charter that allows it to provide relief services and community health services in times of disaster. This way ARC is able to deliver relief programs and services to victims in a disastrous event. In the same manner, a partnership with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) agency for assistance in quality assurance and safety of blood services provides the policies to ARC for effective working and improving safety and quality of life of the victims in danger. The impact of these policies and legislation involves concordance with Geneva Conventions and the provision of better quality services of emergency relief to victims of the disaster (Office of the Corporate Ombudsman Charter I. – American Red Cross, 2007). Funding, policies, and legislation play a major role in improving the quality of life of the affected individuals by disasters. As the lack of proper funding or not following guiding policies, ARC will be unable to provide the care and treatment services along with other basic necessities that it works for in times of disasters. Therefore, funding, policies and legislation play a huge role in bringing betterment to community individuals’ life as a result of trauma or disaster.

Impact of American Red Cross on Health and Safety Needs of the Community

ARC plays a vital role in improving health and safety of the community by providing immediate services to victims of disastrous events. Through their immense part in seeking blood donors and providing to the patients in need of it, ARC has enhanced health of many patients. By providing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) trainings to the volunteers, safety of victims facing disasters is ensured (Foster-Chang, 2022). The disaster relief provided to the victims by ARC in a disaster consists of food, refuge, and emergency medical aid. This organization promotes the local and governmental actions of health and safety by providing educational sessions along with delivering medical services of which local communities lack access.  For instance, ARC takes some burden off the health organizations in times of disasters when the medical facilities are in great demand and they could be diminished or wrecked as a result of disaster. In such scenarios, ARC plays a huge role in providing health and safety with the support of governmental organizations. The ARC organization also supports the reconstruction of damaged facilities and rehabilitation of the victims. They enhance the health and safety of the local community by creating mental health programs for recovery of the people who were traumatized by the disaster (American Red Cross, n.d.). In these programs, nurses can play wide role as volunteers to improve the mental health of affected people who are emotionally not healthy yet and are still traumatized as a result of disastrous events. Nurses who are cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) trained can play a huge role in saving affected people in disaster who are at the verge of death. They can also provide mental health support to people who are traumatized post-disaster. They can provide care treatments to the injured or affected by the disaster and allocate limited resources and also monitor physical and mental health needs. Nurses can also help organizational logistics by creating operational response standards and security measures and doing statistical analysis of individual and community-level data (Flaubert et al., 2021).

Conclusion

American Red Cross (ARC) is a humanitarian organization that works for providing food, shelter, medical aid to the people who are the victims of any disastrous events e.g. earthquakes, rainfalls, floods etc. They make sure that every needy victim of chaotic event gets the basic health care necessity. This is done by the proper funding by the generous donors who donate financially and some of the donors participate in blood donations for people who are in need of blood due to severe injuries as a result of disastrous events. ARC works under the congressional charter and also works in alliance with FDA and follow their policies to improve their work and health and safety of the affected patients. 

References:

American Red Cross. (2018). Mission & principles. Redcross.org. Retrieved May 5, 2023, from https://www.redcross.org/about-us/who-we-are/mission-and-values.html 

American Red Cross. (n.d.). Public Health and Safety Insights. Retrieved May 5, 2023, from Www.redcross.org. https://www.redcross.org/about-us/driven-by-data/public-health-and-safety-insights.htm

American Red Cross. (2018). Our History. Redcross.org. Retrieved May 5, 2023, from https://www.redcross.org/about-us/who-we-are/history.html 

American Red Cross. (2021). Red cross launches national initiative to reach more blood donors to help patients with sickle cell disease. Www.redcross.org. Retrieved May 5, 2023, from  https://www.redcross.org/about-us/news-and-events/press-release/2021/red-cross-launches-national-initiative-to-reach-more-blood-donors-to-help-patients-with-sickle-cell-disease.html 

American Red Cross. (2023). American Red Cross Statement on FDA MSM Deferral Policy. Www.redcross.org. https://www.redcross.org/about-us/news-and-events/press-release/2020/statement-on-updated-fda-donor-eligibility-criteria.html 

Foster-Chang, S. (Sally). (2022). Praise for new evidence-based 2020 american red cross CPR training. Workplace Health & Safety, 70(2), 120–120. https://doi.org/10.1177/21650799211070818 

Hassan, I. (2019). The American Red Cross’ disaster protocol: Delaware Journal of Public Health, 5(4), 16–17. https://doi.org/10.32481/djph.2019.10.006 

Kohlenberger, J., Buber-Ennser, I., Rengs, B., Leitner, S., & Landesmann, M. (2019). Barriers to health care access and service utilization of refugees in Austria: Evidence from a cross-sectional survey. Health Policy, 123(9), 833–839. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthpol.2019.01.014 

Office of the Corporate Ombudsman Charter I. – American Red Cross. (2007). Congressional Charter of the American National Red Cross. Retrieved May 5, 2023, from https://www.redcross.org/content/dam/redcross/atg/PDF_s/Governance/Corporate_Ombudsman/charter.pdf