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Head Start Workers Research

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Research Proposal “Knowledge and attitudes of Head Start workers in relation to smoking and infant mortality rates in African American population”

Bhanat Eldrin Lalitchandra
Research Techniques DPH 680 Research Proposal
Introduction: A lot has been said about the relation between maternal smoking and infant mortality in the recent past. According to a report from CDC, the infant mortality rate for 2013 was 5.96 infant deaths per 1000 live births. Sudden infant death syndrome was found to be the 4th leading cause of infant mortality (Kochanek, Xu, Murphy, Miniño, & Kung, 2011). Maternal cigarette smoking is an …show more content…

From the year 1960 to 2005 the infant mortality rates among the African Americans has increased by 1.6 to 2.4 times more than the whites. The infant mortality rates in this population is mainly because of the five causes that are, congenital malformations, short gestation, sudden infant death syndrome, maternal complications and placental membranes problems. Maternal smoking is considered to be a risk factor for all of these problems. The African American population is prone to these complications because of various problems like, a young age at pregnancy, decreased education status, decreased …show more content…

When they themselves do not understand the importance to quit smoking, how is it possible that they can educate the general population. The multiple barriers faced by the health workers usually are, cultural, personal social and environmental cofactors. Stress might act as a personal facilitator to continue smoking. Sometime they do not have the knowledge or access to join smoking cessation programs. Sometimes according to the article, “The midwife’s role in providing smoking cessation interventions for pregnant women: The views of midwives working with high risk, disadvantaged women in public sector antenatal services in South Africa “, (Murphy, Steyn & Mathews, 2016) the health workers know about the risks of smoking but are not capable enough of disseminating that information to the general public due to lack of knowledge, skills and personal confidence. The correlation of these with my study is that the proper education of the head start workers will involve the brushing up of their counselling skills and their level of education should be up to

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