Understanding ecological models - Assignment Example

Download file to see previous pages The ecological perpsective of health promotion is an approach that recognizes the interconnectedness of people with their physical and socio-cultural environments. Ecological approaches are so effective because they involve the most factors and determinants of healthFor example, anti-smoking campaigns aimed at teens in South African found that teen smoking rates were linked with a lack of recreational facilities and whether or not the teen's parents smoked. Limitations of the ecological approach include: -Difficult to implement multi-level approaches.-Health care professionals unfamiliar with these – usually just individual approaches.-large amounts of enegry, creativity, and patience.-Challenging and expensive to changealready built enviornments, especially if those environments (i.e. buildings) are privately owned.-”Operationalizing the general princiapls of evological models for specific behaviours is a challenging but essential step.”The purpose of the paper by Elder et. Al (2007) is: to describe a framwork that would be used to guide an individual study.The integration of a wide number of contributing theories into Elder et. al's ecological framework is valuable because Gathers a wider range and depth of knowledge to the framework.“Theories that helped guide and inform the TAAG SE model are operant conditioning, social cognitive theory (SCT) and organizational change theory,including diffusion of innovations. These theories are incorporated into the TAAG model (see Fig. 1), which serves to put all relevant theories into a unified whole. The model, then, informs the intervention development by providing its theoretical grounding."

6.
Sallis and Owen (2002; p468)


the components of the TAAG model fulfill the "principles of ecological approaches to health behaviour change" to the extent that contributing theories such as social cognative theory and organizational change theory are included within the model.



HPRM3000: Portfolio Task 3
Health Priorities and the Importance of Populations

1. This kind of research so important for health promotion because demographic, and distribution information on health matters is vital for informed health policy creation and implementation.


2. The description, strengths and weaknesses of the DALY are:

"Health loss expressed as disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) and presented as proportions of total DALYs and DALY rates (crude and agestandardised)
per 1000 population." " One DALY is equivalent to one lost year of healthy
life and represents the gap between current health status and an ideal situation"
Links to a format used by The World Bank (allows for ease of international comparision of data). A disadvantage is that it is a "created" and not a "real" mesaurement.
ii) In Australia, the progressive increase in body mass is strongly associated with an increase in Type II Diabetes. As these connected risk factors and issues have been getting worse, instead of better, new more effective strageties are required. Two other areas: women's mental health and Aboriginal peoples (especially those in the NT) require immediate, planned progressive health promotion action.

7.
a) Stephen R Leeder, Susan U Raymond and Henry M Greenberg Poverty and Human Development The need for leadership in global health. The Medical Journal of Australia. MJA 2007; 187 (9): 532-535
b) Global Leadership in health is present in Australia. This has resulted in deeper and more informed ecological health policies that have lead to concrete action to prevent futher diseases from global climate change. (This is a topic that is just now recieving global attention as a health issue.)

8. International Health Risks
In the early 1980s, London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene epidemiologist Geoffrey Rose suggested another reason why the intrapopulation studies might fail to detect benefits of salt reduction that could still have a significant public health impact. Rose ...Download file to see next pagesRead More