Background

Public health intervention is considered to be playing a highly crucial role in the longevity, productivity an overall health of a community, so that the quality of life of the community members can be improved. In addition to this, it helps the children to thrive as well as save financial resources (Winter, Dzombo & Barchi, 2019). The aim of this promotional intervention plan is to reduce and eventually eradicate Diarrhea in the inner City slums of Australia. This paper will contain a brief details of the background of the targeted community, a brief discussion on the health intervention program along with an outline of the plan.

Diarrhea is a non-communicable intestinal infection that involves loose and watery bowel movement. It is also characterised by lose of crucial minerals like sodium, potassium and chloride along with salt from the body. This disease leads to dehydration and often, if left untreated, leads to serious complications. Given the fact that the disease is particularly fatal for infants and children, the target community of this heath intervention program is children below 5 years old. As per Jérôme et al. (2021), given the fact that Diarrhea is a water borne disease, it is mostly prevalent amongst people who consume unfiltered water, specifically, people living in urban slums have been found to be highly susceptible to the disease. Hence the targeted community is children below 5 years living in the urban slums of Australia. It has been found that people living in slums are comparatively more vulnerable to malnutrition. The key reason behind this is high exposure and consumption of unfiltered water and poor hygiene. Shortage of adequate sanitation, lack of safe water for drinking, cleaning and cooking have been seen in majority of the urban slums (Mahapatra et al., 2021). While people of every age is susceptible to the disease, fatal consequences have been evidenced amongst infants and children bellow the age of 5. Diarrhea has been found to be the 2^nd major reason behind death of children in urban slums. Hence the health needs includes proper sanitation, clean water, healthcare as well as effective knowledge. As per Khaliq et al. (2022), out of 3, every child suffers from Diarrhea in urban slums. This indicates its high rate of prevalence. While the morality rate 1 out of 9 children, lack of proposal treatment in slum areas enhance the morality rate by 40 percent. As per Alburo and Otadoy (2022), hospitalization before major deterioration along with appropriate medical care poses the potential to reduce the morality rate to a great extent.

Health Intervention Program

Given the fact that since the last 5 years, the mortality rate of children below 5 years, living in urban slums has got increased by 15.3 percent, it has become crucial to raise the awareness of the community members about the disease (Otsuka et al., 2019). A successful health intervention program will not only be able to decrease the morality rate of infants and children due to diarrhoea, butt will also improve the overall sanitation and hygiene of the community members

To meet the health needs of the targeted community, the key health intervention includes medication , improved sanitation and safe drinking water. The approach that requires to be adopted includes sociological approach. As per Surana et al. (2020), the sociological approach to health includes considering the environment, social structure, culture and history) of the targeted population for providing health intervention (Murarkar et al., 2020). Given the fact that poverty is one of the key reasons behind the increasing prevalence of diarrheal in the slums, the health intervention program will address this factor a well (Taher, 2022). Initiatives will be taken to supply safe and clean water for drinking and cooking purposes.  The primary and secondary level of health intervention has been considered for this issue. The primary level of health intervention includes enhancing the awareness of the parents, while providing medications and healthcare support to save the life of children currently suffering from Diarrhea can be considered to be a part of secondary information.

Ottawa Charter Strategies of the health promotion which is relevant to the intervention includes enabling and mediating. The strategy of enabling includes creating a supportive environment, along with providing individual with the information and skills and strengthening community action for better health outcome. The Theory of reasoned action can be used as the health promotional framework to be followed (Roja et al., 2018). The first step will include developing funds to ensure safe water for the slum areas. The second step will include providing appropriate medication and healthcare support to children  suffering from Diarrhea. The third step will include enhancing the awareness amongst the parents and care giver about the impact of Diarrhea on children and how to prevent the same through proper hugging, sanitation and usage of safe water.

The aim of the health program is to reduce the adverse impact of Diarrhoea amongst the children below 5 years old, in urban slum areas of Australia.

The objectives of the Health intervention plan are as follows:

1. To enhance the awareness of the parents and care givers about the impact of Diarrhea and how they can prevent them through proper sanitation, hygiene and safe water usage.
2. Providing them with knowledge and skills of using the available resources for effective maintenance of hygiene and sanitation
3. Providing additional support from the end of the government to provide them with availability of safe water.

Activities	Year (2022-2023)
month
Assess community needs and situation	January -February
Plan the Program		March
Design the intervention			April-sept
Implement the program				Oct-Dec
Evaluation the program					Dec-feb
Report the outcome						March-April

The key stakeholders of this intervention includes the local and federal government, a series of NGOs, healthcare centres, physicians and social workers and local schools. 

References

Alburo, H. M., & Otadoy, J. B. (2022). Prevalence of asthma, dengue, and diarrhea among children in slum communities in Cebu City, Philippines. Journal of Agriculture and Technology Management, 24(2). https://jatm.ctu.edu.ph/index.php/jatm/article/download/365/220

Jérôme, Y., Alexis, M., Telcy, D., Saffache, P., & Emmanuel, E. (2021). The challenge of water in the sanitary conditions of the populations living in the slums of Port-au-Prince: The case of Canaan. In. Environmental Health, 65. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03207174/document

Khaliq, A., Jameel, N., & Krauth, S. J. (2022). Knowledge and Practices on the Prevention and Management of Diarrhea in Children Under-2 Years Among Women Dwelling in Urban Slums of Karachi, Pakistan. Maternal and Child Health Journal, 1-11. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10995-022-03391-9

Mahapatra, T., Mahapatra, S., Datta Chakraborty, N., Raj, A., Bakshi, B., Banerjee, B., … & Kanungo, S. (2021). Intervention to Improve Diarrhea-Related Knowledge and Practices Among Informal Healthcare Providers in Slums of Kolkata. The Journal of infectious diseases, 224(Supplement_7), S890-S900. https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/224/Supplement_7/S890/6406614

Murarkar, S., Gothankar, J., Doke, P., Pore, P., Lalwani, S., Dhumale, G., … & Malshe, N. (2020). Prevalence and determinants of undernutrition among under-five children residing in urban slums and rural area, Maharashtra, India: a community-based cross-sectional study. BMC Public Health, 20(1), 1-9. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/13674935211057714

Otsuka, Y., Agestika, L., Widyarani, N. S., & Yamauchi, T. (2019). Risk factors for undernutrition and diarrhea prevalence in an urban slum in Indonesia: Focus on water, sanitation, and hygiene. The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene, 100(3), 727. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6402924/

Roja, V. R., Galhotra, A., Rajan, A. V., Malarout, N., Pateria, S., & Kamath, R. (2018). Health status of under-five children living in urban slums. Indian Journal of Public Health Research & Development, 9(10), 195-201. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dr-Vr/publication/331344198_SCOPUS_IJPHRD_CITATION_SCORE_Health_status_of_under_Five_Children_living_in_urban_slums/links/5c74bee892851c6950414ce7/SCOPUS-IJPHRD-CITATION-SCORE-Health-status-of-under-Five-Children-living-in-urban-slums.pdf

Surana, A. U., Sengupta, D. S., Chauhan, H. R., Budh, H. P., & Gandhi, T. (2020). Socio-demographic characteristics, breast feeding practices and household sanitation as risk factors for diarrhoeal illness in under five children. International Journal of Contemporary Pediatrics, 7(3), 635. https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/70892958/2142-libre.pdf?1633163113=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DSocio_demographic_characteristics_breast.pdf&Expires=1648125692&Signature=L8P90ybsYk8x1l-b2jjXYFGZxTQq1EruvrZ38kKFPtMEQmM01sg3DfB3arasccNZGfDys6S4U9M5p5L2G~8Dv02ir1enEzndoBxu1zT22hqnIe6wWdNh2Yov~8Csb7VHvymaILGtOqv7NjoQfxFY2CkfJx-K3yCDj56Xk-NnMrZQAEk9tIo9e54VjUxm8gijJhIZ0VZekpc~6MdhPPhDIir7u2W-jTXA6xPML-aQ3xH5lVANvIyop-NY5Zn0QXyDj4hCyLqLqJK-iH6r2k~iVQTHF9ny1~4dFGAt4-0DPe-xBPVYRvWKCCqfsmo0tP9wnWgOVT~y6Fp1Yx~4kZR4WA__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA

Taher, N. L. (2022). Prevalence of Diarrhea and Associated Factors Among Children Under 5 Years in Baghdad. Journal of Medical & Clinical Nursing. SRC/JMCN-147. DOI: doi. org/10.47363/JMCN/2022 (3), 138, 2-5. https://www.onlinescientificresearch.com/articles/prevalence-of-diarrhea-and-associated-factors-among-children-under-5-years-in-baghdad.pdf

Winter, S., Dzombo, M. N., & Barchi, F. (2019). Exploring the complex relationship between women’s sanitation practices and household diarrhea in the slums of Nairobi: a cross-sectional study. BMC infectious diseases, 19(1), 1-13. https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-019-3875-9