Health Promotion Program Proposal - Research Paper Example

Executive Summary This proposal has been prepared on the basis of the high concern that primary health care is accorded. Focus on the social interactions of the society that brings stratification will form the information gap. The stratification of the society exhibits the wealthy people getting better access to primary health care unlike the poor. The study would focus on three specific objectives, namely: identification of employment opportunities for the poor people in Sydney’s Manly council, more so the aboriginal community; improve housing by selecting affordable units; and encouraging the development of community initiatives that would see the poor people uplift their living standards. In terms of employment, advertisement posters would be fostered to acquaint the people with current jobs on the offering. This objective would be monitored through partnership with government institutions where the information from statistics published by the Labor ministry would be incorporated to identify the trends of people in employment in the locality. Affordable housing would be determined by use of statistics of the population of people living in homeless shelters. Community initiatives aimed at money making will be implemented though marketing of ideas to the people where its evaluation once implemented would be monitored through revenue collections by the Australia Taxation Office. The higher the revenues collected by the Australian Taxation Office in comparison to the time the health promotion strategy was implemented would mean the strategy is in the right direction. The results of this study would be based on the hypothesis that the results would be of primary health significance to warrant its application into policy for the Manly council of Sydney. Contents Introduction 3 Rational to Support the Goal Statement 3 Goal Statement 5 Objectives 5 Intervention proposals 6 Project plan 8 Evaluation 10 Conclusion 12 References 12 Introduction Most people would assume that health is a condition purely characterized by an individual’s well being that is not exhibited by disease. This would be an incomplete description according to WHO’s definition of 2008 that, “… health involves both the individual’s well being as well as that of his/her surroundings.” Primary health care has been an issue that has been of great concern since the early times. This is because diseases have never seized to occur within a population that has led to devastating losses of human life. Its application has not been equitably practiced in the general public with discrimination being evident towards gender and or social status. (McGilvray, 1998) Health care promotion has thus come in to eliminate these gaps in health care provisions. Declarations on health have been adopted all over the world concerning health care promotion. The Alma-Ata is an exemplary one that was followed by the recent Ottawa charter that focuses on five areas of implementation. (Litsios, 1997 pp 709-732) Rational to Support the Goal Statement Health promotion is a crucial part of achieving good health care provisions. Health promotion began from the introduction of the Alma-Ata concepts. This began way back in 1978 and fostered the growth of equity in provision of health services all over the world. This concept arose from international concerns of health care provisions that were active rather than proactive in nature. Poverty as a concern was identified as being one of the leading causes of poor health in the society. According to the world health organization, poverty was described as being one of the contributing factors to poor health in the year 2000. The Ottawa Charter that came to be implemented in 1986 was developed in focusing on proactive measures to ascertain good health in the society. The Charter recognizes the influence of poverty in the health of the society and thus proposes that community actions and supportive environments should be instituted to promote health. The charter includes among other strategies that can be employed in promoting health. (Bunton & Macdonald, 2003) The poverty status in the US though a developed nation is still considered one to be of concern. In the 2006 census that was done, it was indicated that about 3 million Australian people were living below the poverty line. This represented about 14.5% of the Australian total population. A previous census in 2001 indicated that the conditions were more or less the same with that in 2006 where poverty was marked at 13.8%. This implied that poverty status was stabilizing. Even though the health provisions are of concern as basic necessity, is not equitably given to the population. (Minkler, 1999) The health care functioning according to Lalonde (1995) has often based its approach on the old tactics of increasing health care provisions so as to tackle health issues once they arise in the society. The majority of people who have suffered from this active tactics of healthcare have often been the poor communities which are prone to wide spread health problems. This has exhibited itself as a gap in the health promotion initiative that has created the goals of this research in improving living standards, and creating equality in health service provision. The current “… proactive measures have since been adopted all over the world in a way of ensuring sustainable development” (Epp, 200, p 45). Sustainable development since its invention in the discussion in the text of the Brut land commission and further in the Rio declaration is defined by the act of the present generation taking good care of the environmental resources so that the future generation can also enjoy the resources in their time. (Torres & Tilford, 2002) The development of a health promotion program that focuses its work on eradicating poverty is beneficial to a government because it will reduce spending on curative measures of health provisions. This is considered to be more expensive compared to the preventive methods that are cheaper. Hence, the government would save in terms of expenditure and divert the funds to other important national programs. Goal Statement The goal attainment in this study is to reduce the economic gap between the wealthy and the poor so that health care provisions are given in an indiscriminate way. Objectives This research will encompass three specific objectives to achieve the goals of the primary health initiatives for equitable health care provisions. These are, namely: i. To increase the identification of jobs on offer to the poor community of Manly council so that they can elevate their social status and consequently attain higher standards of living that would improve their general health. ii. To make the costs of housing be in the reach of the general community so that every body has equal access to proper shelter free from the harsh or extreme weather conditions. iii. To create community initiatives that could uplift Manly Council by come up with activities that develops its economic structure so that it is self sufficient. Intervention proposals The research would involve a systematic approach to the implementation of the study objectives. This will be achieved through a cumulative approach of evaluating the outcome of each of the research objectives in correlation to primary health care in the community in focus. The first objective of the research would focus in bridging in the gap in housing between the wealth people in the local community and the poor ones. This will aim at providing good housing to the people. In providing good housing for the poor individuals in the society, the research would be focusing in a proactive way of ensuring good health of the people. When one has good housing, he or she is not subjected to the harsh weather conditions of the day or the night. Exposure to these bad weather conditions would created the suitable grounds for the infection of diseases. Therefore, as a basic requirement to providing good health services, proper housing will cut down on government expenditures in providing funds for medicines to the local hospitals as the cases of health problems would not be highly prevalent. Just according to the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, (Pelletier, 2004) housing which comprises of the basic human requirements falls under this large portion of the hierarchy that is given first priority. Therefore, in implementing it for the benefit of the poor people in society, it will elevate their living standards in the community and consequently lead to good health standards. In measuring this aspect after its implementation, the study will encompass the trends in the house prices and their monthly rents in trying to determine weather the trend is favorable for the poor people in comparison with their daily minimum wages. The aspect of good housing would be supplemented with an observation of the population which lives in the homeless shelters. The use of the statistics of people living in the homeless shelters will be an indicator of the capability of the people to afford a descent place to live which is their own. Because poor people according to WHO’s observation in 2005 are the ones associated with living in homeless shelters, a decline or upsurge of their numbers in these shelters would be able to give the indication of whether the program is working. In terms of the second objective, the community’s living standards would be strengthened through the formation of communal groups that are aimed at creating programs that will be of financial input to the poor people. Their involvement into the communal groups would enable them make extra money to cushion them from the hardships of life, thus improving the health conditions by reducing stress and depression levels. Poor communities are usually characterized by depression and stress because of the struggles of trying to make ends meet from the many obligations that are dictated by the existence of oneself. (Elgbers et al, 2007) The development of this program to sustaining communal health would be monitored through revenue collections by the Australian Taxation Office, ATO. Every business venture within the boundaries of the US has to be monitored by the ATO and thus forms the basis of determining how well the communal financial groups are performing. The groups would have to submit their returns inform of taxes to the ATO so that they can be defined as legal entities. However, this will have to take place after the communal groups have established themselves well to start making big profits out of their communal venture. The objective concerning job creation among the poor in the local community will be based on labor measurements. The labor measurements would come from statistics provided by the Labor ministry of Australia. The ministry of labor of Australia utilizes a number of models to calculate the gross turnover in work flows and destructions. The models encompass demographic figures of the representative locations and regions to derive the status of employment projections in Australia. In specificity, the data assembled from the labor ministry statistics will provide a measure of determining whether the health promotion program in terms of employment creating is working well. The trends exhibited by the labor statistics will provide the grounds of determining the effectiveness of the program in improving the health status of the local community. Project plan Objective 1: Job creation Action Partners Time frame Resources required Intensive methods of bringing job postings and vacancies to the public through public advertisements that are of easy access to the poor people in the community. The objective would be evaluated through employment statistics portrayed in the publications of the labor ministry. A high population that would be in current indication of employment in comparison with before the conception of the health promotion program would indicate a positive outcome. Department of Employment, work force relations. New South Wales Department of health. Australia bureau of statistics. Through out the study – (6 months) Printing services. Staff to distribute the job postings around the location. Internet costs in browsing through databases of employment bureaus. Objective 2: Affordability in Housing Population of people in homeless shelters would be determined at baseline level and after the implementation of the project. The statistics of the people in terms of trend would be analyzed to compare the impact of cost and availability of good housing. Department of housing. New South Wales department of Health. Two months Staff to move through the community shelters to collect data on the population of people. Objective 3: Creation of Community Initiatives Social marketing of economic ideas would be presented to the community. Feasible community actions would be considered due to the social status of the community. Once implemented, the community initiative would be monitored through revenue collections associated with the specific project. The period publications of the ATO will be used to identify the trend of the initiative. If the revenue collections to the given location are higher than before implementation of the project, then the results would make the study credible for policy consideration. Australia Taxation Office New South Wales department of health. Entire project cycle Staff to promote community initiative ideas. Evaluation To be able to identify the success or failure of the health provision program, evaluation of the specific objectives would be done in a continuous. The creation of employment opportunities and the further indulgences of the poor people into work will be evaluated using the labor statistics of the locality. The labor ministry provides statistical information in a periodic manner. The analysis of the figures will determine whether work is being created in terms of people who are working. The population of the locality through assistance from the demographic data of the Census Bureau will be used to compare the people who are currently working against the population of the people who were working before the undertaking of the study. Data obtain from publications of the ATO will also be used to identify the trend in employment. The revenue collections from the study location in its current state will be compared with those in the former time before the implementation of the strategy. A rise in revenue would mean that more jobs have been created and that the ATO is collecting more tax because there are more people in employment. In terms of housing, the evaluation criteria will involve collecting base line data on the homeless shelters in the society. The poor people are the ones who are believed to live in the homeless shelters. Their numbers would be ascertained through visiting different homeless shelters in the location and taking the average numbers of the people who spend their nights there. This will be done in a period of two months so as to identify the trends in the numbers of people taking refuge in the homeless shelters with focus in the high and low peak periods in numbers. His would be done so that a near approximate figure of the people in the homeless shelters cane done and also errors in evaluation can be minimized. The development of community initiatives that are focused on financial uplifting of the poor people would be assessed through revenue collections of the locality. Once the community groups are established and recognized by the ATO, the trend in the collection of taxes and their publication will be used to determine the impact of this strategy in uplifting the financial status of the people. If the revenue collections by the ATO are high, then it would imply the strategy is working and hence should be encouraged in the location. However, if the collection in revenue does not indicate any raise in the previous trends of collection, then the strategy will be considered not functioning well and would need to be redesign in that location so that its impact on improving health care is felt. The department of health of New South Wales would be involved in all the stages of the research in trying to establish whether the results obtained are of health care significance through literature in their disposal. Conclusion The results of the study are expected to provide the basis of improving the health care sector by making it more proactive rather than active to the health needs of the population. The results will contribute to the equity guidelines of the Attama Ata declaration and the Ottawa charter. References Bunton P & Macdonald T. (2003). Health Innovations in the 21st Centaury. 2nd ed. London: Rout ledge Press. Elgbers G, Protus M.N, Chin W. S.D, Bringen W. (2007). Psychological Health and its Impacts on Community Health. Australia, Oxford University Press. Epp M. (2001). A Health Concept of Sustainable Development. London, UK, Blackwell. Kraft, M., Flitcher, D.F. & Gitlin, L. N. (2005) Ratenskis Recommendations on Healthy Law. New York, Mc-Graw Hill. Lalonde M. (1995). Ottawa Concept of Health Care. London, UK, Oxford University Press. Lee E, Tan K. P, Beagle R. Health Promotions Tracks from Ideas to Universal implementation. New York, Wiley and sons Litsios T. (1996). The Struggles to Health and Wholeness. Pub - Canadian Institute for Medical research. UK, Polity Press. Litsios T. (2003). Gaps in Health Care Provisions. New York, Springer, pp 709-732 Mathews, K & Collins F. l. (2008).The 6th Health Assembly: Mending the Equity Gap. USA, Mc-Graw Hill. Minkler B. (1999). Population Demographics: An Evaluation of Poverty. New York, Springer McGilvray W.A. (1998). Alma-Ata Declaration: An Analysis of its Achievement. New York, Routlege. Pelletier G. D. (2004). Maslow’s Hierarchy: A Focus on Priority Settings. New York, Oxford Press Sullivan, J., Peters, F & Jonas P. (2008). Fourth International Assembly on Health. New Approaches for a Modern time. UK, Blackwell. Torres V & Tilford C. (2002). The Brut land Accord on Universal Health. 2nd ed.UK: Nelson Thorns. WHO. (2005). Health Programs and Principles of Ottawa. Switzerland, Geneva, World Health Organization Publication WHO (2008). The Concept of Good Health: An internal Assessment. 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