Expectations and Relationships Among African American Women - Essay Example

Although dietary intake contributes or predisposes these women to contraction of metabolic related disease, it is of paramount importance to analyze how individual women select their food. Health disparities among people of different races in US continue to exist up to now despite the presence of community based strategies of eliminating these disparities. While most of these programs have recently begun employing cultural competency and identity, they still largely remain unsustainable due to some limitations.

One of the limitations is lack of enough outreach in the targeted communities despite the fact that they are highly rated by those communities (Kannan, Sparks, Webster, Krishnakumar and Lumeng, 2010). According to Story, Kaphingst, Robinson-O'Brien and Glanz (2008), the PEN 3 model is very effective in the implementation of health promotion programs within the community. This is usually the case when the three domains of the model are contemplated and implemented within the models. The aim of this paper is therefore to discuss the domain of expectations and relationships among the African American Women with regards to healthy eating.

Expectations and relationships form the second domain of the PEN 3 model and was previously known as diagnosis of health behavior. In this domain the acronym is used to allude to three elements namely; perceptions, enablers and nurturers. Perceptions The perception element revolves such issues as attitudes, values, beliefs and knowledge that acts as motivating or hindering factors with regards to change of a behavior. Most of the things that individuals engage in within a community are largely influenced and informed by the society.

Conformation to societal expectations is one of the most treasured values which people undertake in order to have a sense of belonging. It is therefore not a wonder that people continue to perceive their health status in tandem with their societal cultural beliefs (Hargreaves, Schlundt and Buchowski, 2002). For instance, cultural beliefs concerning healthy eating still influence how African American Women choose their diets and end up being overly obese. When knowledge and values are learned within a society for a long time, it becomes arduous to change them.

This is despite the benefits that are easily discernable especially with regards to health promotion programs. In this regards, health programs should be based on the perceptions of a community as opposed to the identified needs by the developers of the programs. By giving the community the priority in development of health promotion programs, a degree of success is guaranteed in informing it about healthy nutrition (Barnes, Goodrick, Pavlik, Markesino, Laws and Taylor, 2007). Enablers Enablers have been described as systemic forces or societal constructs that either enhance healthy behaviors or prevent it by imposing some barriers.

Resources which are available in a community also fall in this group and are very important in facilitating awareness with regards to health issues. For example, Hargreaves, Schlundt & Buchowski (2002) noted that the failure of government policies to understand and integrate contextual factors in health promotion programs is unlikely to yield the desired results among African American Women. This is because an array of contextual factors