Community and Public Health - Essay Example

?Community and Public Health Historical contributions of public health Community and public health have several different features defining the different role they play in promoting people’s health. According to Hernandez & Munthali (2007), some of these features include epidemiology, environmental health, disease control, maternal and child health, injury control, occupational health and nutrition. All these features differ in terms of the impact they have had in improving health status and quality of life throughout history. According to me, the features that have had the greatest impact on improving health status and quality of life throughout history are disease control and injury control. According to Jones (2012), public health issues are organized and implemented for the entire population with public funding. The disease control feature has been the greatest beneficiary of public funding throughout history. It has also been organized and implemented severally in different population. Therefore, there has been emerging new disease control system that helps to control diseases that were uncontrollable in the past like cancer and meningitis. As a result, it has yielded very great impact in improving health status and quality of life throughout history and it is expected to continue doing so even in the future. Another feature of public health that has contributed a great deal in improving health status and quality of life through history is the injury control. In the past public health, community did not take interest in injury prevention since they thought that most of them were inevitable. However, about half a century ago they came to realize that most of the injuries that affect people could be prevented. After this realization, tools of injury prevention were developed to prevent injuries. Some of these tools like the training of drivers and driving policies are remains viable today and can be used in risk reduction (Jansen, 2012). This is because of the great role they have been playing in improving health status and quality of life throughout history. Poverty and health According to Perales & Young (1988), in several nations access to health care is generally dependent on the ability to pay for it. In addition, several research undertaken in different populations indicate that people who are worse of socio-economically have worse health regardless of how we measure socio-economic status (Marmot & Wilkinson, 2006). Therefore, it is clear that poverty cause poor health in a community. However, several researches undertaken by the World Health Organization identifies poor health as the major cause of poverty (WHO, 2006). Using this view we can conclude that poor health is a cause of poverty. Therefore, the best way to represent the relationship between poverty and health is using a cycle that indicates that one leads to the other depending on which one has occurred first. The different views on the relationship between poverty and health influence public health policies in different ways. The two major ways in which they influence public policies is through how policies are formulated and how they are implemented. The view of poverty as a cause of poor health mainly makes the policy makers and implementers to focus on public health policies that focus in controlling poverty in their effort to improve public health. On the other hand, the view of poor health as a cause of poverty makes policy makers and implementers to focus on policies that can improve health in an effort to reduce poverty. Two major types of measurement used to assess and report health related finding are the measure of productivity of a person and the measure of their productive levels of a person. In terms of productivity of a person, one can measure the number of hour that a person is able to work continuously without being interrupted by an illness. In terms of reproductive levels, one can measure whether an individual has inability to have offspring. These two types of measurement resemble each other in that they are negatively affected by poor health and both of them vary across societies and different environments. However, the productivity of a person does not vary with gender while reproductive levels of an individual vary according to his gender. These two types of measurement are actually very informative in assessing and reporting health related findings. U.S. Health Care System Critical Issues Various critical issues require to be addressed concerning the U.S. Health Care System. One of these issues is the cost of health care that has always been high and escalating from time to time. These has actually made health care to be unaffordable to some of the citizens of this country. Another critical issue is the quality of services provided by some health care facilities. Some health care facilities especially those that charge less for the health care services provide services that are of very poor quality. Another critical issue is the accessibility of health care facilities. Some of the health care facilities, especially those designed for specialized group of people like the pregnant women and people who are addicted with drugs are not located in places where these people can easily access them. These three critical issues have greatly affected the offering of health care services to citizens of this country and hence they require to be addressed. Role of prevention in health status Currently in the United states an ounce of prevention is not worth a pound of cure since treatment of most disease have been discovered and are currently available. According to Baliga & Eagle (2008), it is sometimes very difficult to measure accurately the relative value of prevention of certain particular health issues. However, prevention continues to be relatively valuable in comparison to treatment since it is not as expensive as treatment and it helps someone to avoid the pains brought about by an illness. Moreover, it can help an individual to avoid have to undergo complex procedures which might be required during treatments. The managed care strategies have played a very great role in making health care to be more affordable. They have also improve the quality of health care provided to the Americans since they evaluated by physicians to determine how much they comply with the laid down standards and they are supervised by a committee of physicians. The motivation of developing these strategies was a rapid cost escalation of medical service and they have actually offered relief to the costs burden (Shi & Singh, 2011). By doing this they have playing a very great role in making public health services to be affordable and accessible to a greater American population. The preventive intervention strategies and intervention strategies aimed at health or illness are directly related. This is because they are designed to deal with a common public health issue. However, preventive strategies aims in preventing people from contracting illnesses while intervention strategies are aims to deal with a disease that has already been contracted. This makes them to differ in terms of how they are formulated and how they are implemented even though both of them are important in achieving a healthy public. Tools for assessing community health The key core values of public health are assessment, policy development, and assurance. There are various tools which can be used for community health assessment one of them being the use of the Planned Approach to Community Health (P.A.T.C.H). PATCH is a tool developed by the centre for disease control and prevention in partnership with state and local health department with an aim of increasing the capacity of communities to plan, implement, and evaluate community based health promotion programs (Sharma & Romas, 2011). This is one of the tools playing a very fundamental role in carrying out public health core functions. According to Edberg (2010), PATCH is a process that many community uses to plan, conduct and evaluate health promotion and disease prevention programs. One of the major roles that it plays in a community is that it helps the community in setting up health priorities. Moreover, it assists the community in collecting and using local data to enhance public health programs and in establishing a health promotion team. Another major role that this tool plays is the evaluating and designing of interventions and therefore it is a very important tool that can assist a lot in community health assessments. A good thing about this tool is that it is applicable in various different situations that make it to be usable by communities found in different places. Due to this tool can be used to enhance public health program of a community in any state in America. In addition, this tool can yield positive results regardless of the environment or surroundings in which it is used and hence it is one of the most significant community health assessment tool. Essential services These are services provided by public health practitioners. One of the most basic of the local public health efforts is the maternal and child health services. This includes various core services among them being the prenatal care services. The public health care system ensures that these services are provided to the public by use of numerous state health agencies. “Every state and territory, as well as the district of Colombia has a state health agency” (Scutchfield & Keck, 2003, p. 465). As a result, individuals in all the states can access these services equally when they require them. This helps the public health system to ensure that these services are provided at their time of need. There are various different barriers to provision of prenatal health services. Some of them are transportation barriers, cultural barriers, financial barriers, attitude of some service providers and language barriers. Several measures have been put in place to overcome these barriers. In the attempt to overcome transport barrier various services providing centres are being established in various locations. To overcome cultural, attitude and language barrier the government is trying to ensure that in each of the centres we have people with cultural and language diversity. To overcome the financial barrier, the government has been trying to improve the Medicaid system to enable low-income women to access prenatal services (Brown, 1988). The ethical considerations to be made in the provision of prenatal services are the meeting of responsibilities. This should be considered both in terms of service provision as well as in generating policies regarding prenatal services provision. In the recent past especially during political times many promises are made regarding the issue of provision of prenatal services most of which are not fulfilled. These ethical issues should be considered by the all the individual involved and they should make sure that they meet their responsibilities as expected by the people they serve. Individual rights verses societal rights The main aim of public health is to prevent occurrence of health care issue that might affect the public when they occur. This requires the employment of intervention measures such as vaccination, anti-drugs campaigns and motor vehicles safety rules. Public health employs these measures in a societal level and hence what they consider most is the societal rights. According to Bumiller (1992), individual rights can sometimes conflict with group rights and when search conflict arises the people involved always choose to neglect individual rights in order to protect group rights. However, there is a way in which the conflict between individual rights and societal rights can be reduced. If this is achieved then the violation of one of them in the efforts of safeguarding the other can be avoided. One of the ways in which the conflict between individuals’ rights and group rights can be avoided is through ensuring that intervention measures developed are in line with the standards laid down by various human rights organizations. This can be done through a collaborative effort between various human rights organizations and the concerned parties during the formulation of intervention measures for any kind of public health issue (PULP, 2008). A good example of this is involving the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Association in formulating any public health intervention program related to drug abuse and involving the organization of people living with aids in formulation of intervention programs related HIV and AIDs. This can ensure that individual’s rights are not violated in the effort to implement societal rights and hence reducing the conflict between these two kinds of rights. Affordable Care Act The law Patients Protection and Affordable Care Act that came into effect in the year 2010 has a primary purpose of the health reforms to improve the nation’s health. One of the key provisions of the act requires that all United States citizens should purchase health care insurance by the year 2014. Although this might be violating the individuals’ rights to choose what is good for him, is very ethical due to what it is intended to achieve. This is because the personal health issues are not personal problem but also a family, community and national problem. According to the IOM (2001), not having health insurance coverage affects not only the person involved but also his family members, the community and the nation at large. This is because when a person suffers from poor health due to lack of good health services resulting from lack of health insurance coverage his personal productivity is affected which in return affects the productivity of the nation. Therefore, it is ethical for the nation to influence some of the personal decisions related to health issues to avoid the possible effects. For the past few years the costs of health services has been escalating. This has made good health services to be somehow expensive thus making health care insurance coverage to become a necessity (Guerin & DelPo, 2011). Currently people with insurance coverage do not find it difficult to cater for their medical bills. However, those without medical insurance are sometimes unable to cater for their medical bills thus requiring the intervention of the government and well-wishers. Therefore, lack of insurance coverage affects the government indirectly and thus it is ethical for the government to require each of its citizens to have an insurance coverage. Science versus social policy Both science and social policies have influence on the health status of individuals either directly or indirectly. However, the influence of science policies differs from the influence of the social policies. From a critical evaluation of the two types of policies, I think the social policies can result to further gains in the health status of individuals compared to science policies. One of the reasons why this is so, is because all the health related problems are either directly or indirectly influenced by lifestyle. If policies that are more social were introduced, they would improve lifestyle of individuals and thus improving their health. Another reason is that it is easier to formulate social policies as compared to science policies and hence we can spend less effort in formulating social policies to improve health status as compared to the one we can use to formulate science policies. Another reason is that social policies are affected by factors we can be able to control without undertaking a lot of research while scientific policies are affected by factor we cannot control unless we undertake a lot of research concerning the issue. Public health achievements One of the most important achievements of the public health in the twentieth century was the introduction of managed care system. This is because it helped in providing a relief for the costs of medical services that were escalating before it was introduced. For the twenty-first century, the most important achievement will be the full implementation of Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act especially the act that requires all the citizen of the United States to have a health insurance cover. This is because if it is achieved it will ensure that everybody in this country has access to quality health care and hence we will have a healthy nation. Various barriers might affect the effectiveness of public health. These barriers can be categorized as either internal barriers like fragmented program, inability to prioritize and focus public health efforts or external barriers like public values, economic and resource availability. These barriers differ in terms of their impact to the effectiveness of public health. The ones that might have the greatest negative impact to the effectiveness of public health are the external barriers. This is because they depend on various factors most of which are difficult to control and hence it becomes very difficult to control them. References Baliga, R. R., & Eagle, K. A. (2008). Practical Cardiology: Evaluation and Treatment of Common Cardiovascular Disorders. New York, NY: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Brown, S. S. (1988). Prenatal Care: Reaching Mothers, Reaching Infants. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Bumiller, K. (1992). The Civil Rights Society: The Social Construction of Victims. Baltimore, MA: The John Hopkins University Press. Edberg, M. C. (2010). Essential Reading in Health Behavior: Theory and Practice. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning. Guerin, L., & DelPo, A. (2011). The Manager’s Legal Handbook. Berkeley, CA: The NOLO. Hernandez, L. M., & Munthali, A. W. (2007). Training Physician for Public Health Careers. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. IOM. (2001). Coverage Matters: Insurance and Health Care. 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Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning. WHO. (2006). Integrating Poverty and Gender Into Health Programmes: A Sourcebook for Health Professionals. Manila: World Health Organization. Read More