Week 4 question - Essay Example

As a service provider to the community as a whole, healthcare organizations must consider their role as socially responsible organizations. In other words, the primary objectives of strategic planning in healthcare organizations should include the goal of maintaining healthy communities and a healthy nation. Community health is a serious concern for healthcare leaders in terms of developing and implementing healthcare strategies. For instance, access to care is a basic right for all individuals of a community or a society.

In case of wide and diverse communities, community collaboration or integration is required to implement successful strategic planning. Community organizing involves three approaches - locality development, social planning and social action (McKenzie et al, 2008). Healthcare organizations should be focused on the issue of health maintenance of the whole community including the various economic classes and sub-classes of the community. In order to make healthcare accessible to all people in the community including the indigent and uninsured, healthcare professionals adopt a number of strategies such as (McKenzie et al, 2008, p. 129), In this context, community health education programs are significant to create health awareness among people.

Community health education is strongly associated with the concepts of cultural awareness, cultural sensitivity, cultural competence and multiculturalism. Especially in the United States, increasing diversity in its population has caused the need for multicultural awareness in health education. In order to promote multicultural health education, certain steps are required to take by healthcare organizations: 2. Discussion Question #2: In health care today, there are public and regulatory concerns about fraudulent billing, kickbacks for referrals, differential marketing for health plan enrollees, and even broader issues regarding unavailability of care or unaffordable care for many persons