Mountains Beyond Mountains Community Health

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Mountains Beyond Mountains: Community Health Nursing Kerry G. Peterson Washington State University N440 December 06, 2010 Mountains Beyond Mountains: Community Health Nursing Dr. Paul Farmer has dedicated his life to helping people. He has sacrificed nine months a year of his family life and any modern comforts for a greater cause that he believes in; Zanmi Lasante is the name of the Haitian hospital he has created, where he spends most of his time treating the local people. His cause centers on the people of Haiti and their needs, as well as teaching students in Boston four months of the year. Community health nurses also come face to face with challenges in their local communities. Here they are in a position to get involved and make changes which will help the people in the community; nurses are advocates for the people and they can also be advocates for the problems in the communities where they serve. They have the ability to insert themselves into community issues, and work towards change. This paper will focus on two community health concepts, gathering and using data, and resource disparities. This paper will use these concepts to look at what is being done to address the issues, who is doing this, and how as a community health nurse, one might use political and economic resources to promote changes; the paper will also hypothesize how Paul Farmer might relate to these community issues and what he might do about it, by comparing ways he dealt with these issues in the book Mountains Beyond Mountains. Paul Farmer developed a fascination and concern for the Haitian people that turned into a huge undertaking and a lifetimes work; he is a great example of what one person can do, when they are willing to pay the price of dedication and service. Farmer created a “tidy story” to explain how he ended up in Haiti. This story goes, “I’d like to
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