-compare and contrast your post on “creating a policy briefing book” to the following post 1 and post 2,
-add to the thoughts in the following two posts below by considering the following questions:

-Are there other avenues for solutions?
-Are there other challenges?
-How is nursing a part of this solution, and is there room for increased involvement?
-What would you suggest?

Please be sure to validate your opinions and ideas with citations and references in APA format.

Post 1

The most interesting aspects of this project have been learning all about malaria, how it is transmitted, the vulnerable populations it affects the most, and brainstorming possible solutions to help eradicate this disease in Africa. I was amazed to learn that sleeping under an insecticide-treated bed net (ITN) is the most common and most effective way to prevent malaria infection.  The challenges that I have faced during this project are the lack of available resources for the prevention of malaria. Africans lack availability to basic healthcare, clean water, and something as simple as insecticide-treated nets. It is challenging knowing that malaria has been eradicated in the United States yet in 2019 Africa was home to 94% of malaria cases and deaths.

Things that I would do differently knowing what I know now, would be to work on legislating for socioeconomic disparities in Africa. I would work towards ending poverty by creating sustainable job opportunities and providing quality education to everyone.  Knowing what I know now about the issue and potential solutions, the things that I will do to be a Change Agent in this issue now are to advocate and bring awareness to malaria prevention in Africa. By bringing awareness to this issue, we can get more people and organizations around the world involved and willing to help. Organizations and Individuals can help by donating money to supply necessary items to families in Africa or becoming volunteers to help assemble Insecticide-treated nets and water filters for every home in the most affected regions. Another way to be a change agent can be by volunteering to do a mission trip as a nurse to provide necessary healthcare services to those in need.

Post 2

The most interesting aspects of this project have been researching my topic on poverty and homelessness in the United States. Being able to pinpoint a country and study its statistics has been very interesting. I always knew the homeless population in the United States was high, but I never knew how much it has fluctuated between the years. Knowing that homelessness has been around since the 1800s is really hard to wrap my mind around. There are many challenges I have faced in researching this topic. Overall, there needs to be a push nationwide to end homelessness. Not being able to build or afford housing for this community is an ongoing issue. Not being able to receive adequate healthcare, not being able to afford healthy food, and not living close to parks and grocery stores are detrimental to their health. Without this push for change within the communities, nothing is ever going to be solved to overcome homelessness.

Knowing the new information I have learned, creating another government organization for educational learning would be top on my list. This organization would work towards educating the schools and communities on the history of this ongoing problem. It would also be a great organization for fundraising and teaching the younger children knowledge of this community. Another great idea would be to set up low-income health clinics as the emergency departments receive many non-emergency health problems from this community. These clinics will be very helpful for those in poverty to be able to afford the help they need. Being able to bring more awareness to this topic will be a huge step to decreasing the amount of homeless nationwide. To be a change agent for this community and ongoing health issues, we need to change the way we view this community. An increase in education, may prevent some from becoming homeless in the future and increase the number of people willing to volunteer to help those in need.