Australian Public Health Policy - Coursework Example

Public Health Policy and Society Social Determinants of Health It sometimes feel difficult to swallow the truth that social conditions have a significant impact on our health. We allow this notion to be true only when we are able to afford a healthy lifestyle. For those unable to afford social power and status, health is no more than a cause to survive, and there is a reason to it. Social inequalities are the fruits that we rear in the form of declining health of the working class and has a long way to reside on poverty, joblessness, poor life style, illiteracy, premature mortality rate, insanitary conditions and diseases. In this paper we would discuss education as a social determinant of health in context with those economic and social factors which ultimately contribute towards poor living standards. Although in the past much work has been done in relation to the subject but there is still a long way to make our health policy and societal education better. Education as in the eye of Poverty Education is posited as a key factor in determining the health and well-being of indigenous peoples in Australia (Carson et al, 2007, p. 135). While linking health determinants to education, we find through fieldwork data that education has already played its role in developing psychosocial qualities namely self-efficacy and sense of identity among various Australian communities. However among many reasons that have obstructed the way to educate indigenous, few to name are the contribution of homelessness and unemployment. Since it is through the wages that determine an individual's or a society's purpose and future whether individually or on a collective basis and communicates through other competences and social integration, well-being, mental health and the ability to adapt any environment are the indicators that determine health factor. For those among us who are health conscious and live a healthy life style are not subjected to depressed wages, short-term employment, food and housing issues. We are capable of achieving positive health outcomes if subjected to illness of any kind. On the contrary those who are incapable of acquiring good health are of two types – those who are subjected to poverty and those who have no significant knowledge of how to attain health prosperity. There have been several attempts in the past to how we can reshape our education with respect to health. Respondents' accounts indicate that education is concerned with the pedagogy standards, curriculum matching, student mix and institutional context which must match the strengths, interests and needs of the society in relation to the promotion of positive health outcomes. Research suggests those areas which are characterized by deprivation and high levels of health needs exhibit low interest in education (Schuller et al, 2004, p. 37). This is due to the reason that poverty perceives educational success or failure on other factors that includes shelter, high wages, social status and so on. A person residing in poverty would only consider his or her health if he or she is exposed to a serious illness which might be a threat to life. This is the main reason whenever education has been considered on a collective level, health professionals lagged behind in providing the peoples with a healthier thought, thought that leads to a healthier life. In order to spread the practical implication of education on a collective level, health practitioners must take into account health status behind social determinants of health of indigenous Australians. While making attempts to reverse the health inequities, there is a need to focus on a cause that determines social and economic determinants of health. For the last twenty years, Australian government is well aware of the fundamental conditions and resources for health, shelter, education and food experienced by the indigenous social determinants and consider that the main social determinants of health are deprived from proper planning process. Literature on the social determinants of health raises a question as to why is that various groups of people have poorer health and low graded lifestyles? (Macdonald, 2005, p. 52). What are the ways to link health education and awareness with lifestyle? Of course it is the role of education in the maintenance of health that helps coordinating social health programs and activities. For example when Australian education agencies through the assistance of state health agencies, build state education agency, they commenced the program with partnerships and with appropriate capacity to implement and coordinate school health programs across various schools (Kann et al, 2007). Children Health Poverty is the main root cause of every health drawback, this can be proved by the research work presented by Fleer (2002) who points out that most of the Australian families are not literate and well informed about nutrition and the types of food they prefer to have, since many children lack the nutritional balanced diets needed for growth and development (Fleer, 2002). Similarly a common assumption that leads parents to think about education's impact on their children is limited by the belief that educating their children means access to Western education, and not the mainstream education provided by various tertiary governments. However the association between various school of thoughts and education demonstrates that the practice disregards the extensive, formalized educational practices still prevalent in indigenous communities (Carson et al, 2007, p. 136) because of their limited point of view. Poverty itself is a risk factor responsible for ill health in many socioeconomic groups across Australia. It has taken more than two decades to understand that health delivery models only work to dispense curative and therapeutic interventions for individuals if there is awareness of the solutions that focus on the root causes, not just the symptoms, of the illnesses within populations. There is a need to invest in new approaches to target the communities in order to reverse the economic and social vulnerabilities that decrease the health status of populations thereby increasing the illiteracy rate and burden on health care resources (Leathard, 2003, p. 45). Health planning and multicultural literacy is the contemporary aim of Australian government which through data systems take into account quality of life issues, environmental health and the impact of structural factors on health status (Eager et al, 2001, p. 120). For a long-term impact of prevention, it is essential to literate the citizens through health promotion and creating awareness among them regarding social or individual health risk factors. Areas where literacy rate is low, active consultation requires hard work to induce broad-based community involvement from the inception of a strategy through to its final evaluation. The problem occurs when the community involvement process takes a little longer for the residents to understand the significance that may include health research, focus groups, print and electronic media announcements, meetings with peak, self-help and advocacy groups, forums for providers and public meetings. The role of the health planner in such low literate areas is that of primary consultation which enables the organiser that provide information and resources, to ensure that the consultation is open and equitable, and organise the required forums or consultations. Coping with Health inequalities Another methodological challenge we are confronting in the effort to consider health's equity in the social cause has been with the term 'health inequalities' which mainly refers to the systematic patterns in health status associated with social class or socioeconomic position (Broom, 2008). Australian social policies have made several attempts to identify inadequacies in existing responses of the social system of which the recent one is understanding Indigenous people in terms of their disadvantage (Mitchell & Rowse, 2005). It is now more than two decades that Government has remained unable to combine health inequalities with high inflation rate threatened by the economic foundations, but the second half of that period has been characterized by strong economic growth, rising education standards and material prosperity (Saunders & Eardley, 2008). Government has realized that in order to benefit the indigenous Australians from health services, there is a need to develop social attitude regarding health consciousness. Health Promoting School (HPS) A new concept of HPS was introduced in the early 1980s and is still followed as an acknowledged area of educating children beyond curriculum content by linking schools and their communities, their relationships with parents and families, and their linkages with community agencies and services (Ridge et al, 2002). While articulating the specific needs of children particularly the ones belong to poor class and associated with the health problem, the most effective means of meeting their needs is to give their parents a better understanding of their level of health literacy and the capacity of individuals and the community as a whole to mobilize resources for change. The contemporary school organizations in context with physical and social environmental backgrounds have taken measures for the public health and health promotion practitioner. However it is still important to analyse how over the decades health policies and health phases have been related to develop an understanding of the changing and expanding nature of education and public health activity (ibid). One must analyze how public health has contributed to understand the loopholes that have existed in the education system and how the significant factors have helped to shape contemporary public health activity. Components of many of these phases have continued to sustain on in present-day public health practices in Australia and hold as much contribution to educate Australian citizens as that of any welfare legislative and policy initiatives in public health activity. Whatever the prevalence of public health has remained, the picture of health has sustained as a body of knowledge, a discipline, or set of disciplines, which every health practitioner must take into account to look at the institutions that practice and teach it. Fields like nutrition have ignored human health by considering only as artifacts. For example, certain micro nutrients and vitamins are toxic at a certain level intake, and there are situations in which even lower levels intake lead to conditions that in the long run reshape into major problems of public health significance (Cook & Calabrese, 2006). There must be public awareness on a level and institutions must play their role well in reshaping the professional development in context with the political, social, and policy changes in which it thrives or struggles, and according to the different health cultures that exist to influence the disciplines that feed, compete with, and influence its existence (Bunton & Macdonald, 2002, p. 21). The development of public health as a system of institutions, government functions, and set of related professions can be viewed in a somewhat similar manner because of the extensive involvement of the complex network of public health and health promotion relationships across various public and private realms. Health promotion activities when professed under various social policy processes, involves role modeling on eating habits and conflict resolution, nutrients information practices, diet plans and do's and don'ts of health consciousness (Hayden & Macdonald, 2000). Building healthy public policy means to create various means of health promotion action to achieve health of which the most obvious one is the creation of supportive environments that develop personal skills along with a flair for education. But to promote health on a national level, there is a need to how we connect and perceive the influence social and health policy holds on education. Public health policy must demonstrate a substantial input to educational health promotion, where the first priority of the mentoring body must be taking health promotion into account as a primary reason to educate the public (Puzio, 2003). Or we can say that the study of social policy might highlight those factors that are often suppressed by the emergence of health promotion itself. The main factor which is often ignored in educating public in various health promotion campaigns is the sense of self-awareness or self-knowledge which is often missing while making prescriptions for appraising health science and evaluating health interventions. Self knowledge is often a notion of debate in the recent years and many institutions have analyzed education and self-education in the field of health politics. A critical thought Many suggest that the relative ineffectiveness of health education campaigns in the light of changing health lifestyles is the answer to changing health policies and trends. Critics suggest this has shaken the foundations of health education grounded on unsound and unprofessional philosophical reasons. Even many critics have not even stopped to blame that in the occupations of health education, there is an addition of a new occupation that has shifted its label of health promotion towards declaring a new emerging profession. There is one answer to all the critics and that is Australian social attitudes are responsible for short term changes in contemporary health practices (Gilding, 2006). Throughout years, it has been witnessed that appropriate health education entails to address all the causes and effects of health and illness that may include an exploration of values and attitudes, along with the concern that the educational approach should inform but not influence. This indicates what critical and social bodies wants from the health and education determinant is that there must be some ethics to justify and elaborate health promotion ethics. If we consider ethics to be the ground root of health inequality, we must also acknowledge that it is only through cooperation of communities that we are able to influence people to believe and think ethically. Particularly on health standards, there should not be any compromise even on a lower level. Ethics on one hand condemns 'influence' on part of the health education whereas on the other hand it allows to persuade education in health promotion. That indicates health promoters are bound to persuade public not for the purpose of education alone, but to support them to upgrade their lifestyles in accordance with the changing trends of health care doctrines. Education when placed as a literacy knowledge, has emerged as a competitive agenda in many Australian schools where the main concern was to find a suitable place for health in education process (Ridge, et al, 2002). Ridge et al (2002) in this context points out the need for health education in schools, despite the fact that schools sometimes do and often don't attempt to find time in crowded curriculum to take a look upon health issues so as to literate not only their students but also their families (Ridge et al, 2002). School based health and physical education curriculum and pedagogy are so far the best examples of how a discourse analysis that provides a way of conceptualizing and deconstructing the relations both within and between education, reshapes health as constructed domain (Evans et al, 2004, p. 130). Ending Thoughts The impact of social conditions on our health and its influence on our mentality is a critical subject that still requires exposure, because the way we are used to see our society is an optimistic school of thought. Few of us are able to see the brighter side of the health consciousness, the rest like to remain in social deprivations because they ignore their health concerns, not solely on the basis of social status, but for the reason they do not want to change their attitude towards health. There is still a long way to go on the road to social inequalities where formal and informal education can be the first step to cope up with the health problems based on educational deprive factors. References Broom Dorothy, (2008) 'Gender In/and/of Health Inequalities', Australian Journal of Social Issues. Volume: 43. Issue: 1, p. 11. Bunton Robin & Macdonald, Gordon, (2002) Health Promotion: Disciplines, Diversity, and Development: Routledge: London. Carson Bronwyn, Dunbar Terry, Chenhall, D. Richard & Bailie Ross, (2007) Social Determinants of Indigenous Health: Allen & Unwin: Crows Nest, N.S.W. Cook Ralph & Calabrese J. Edward, (2006) 'The Importance of Hormesis to Public Health', Environmental Health Perspectives. Volume: 114. Issue: 11, p. 1631. Eager Kathy, Garrett Pamela & Lin Vivian, (2001) Health Planning: Australian Perspectives: Allen & Unwin: Crows Nest, N.S.W. Evans John, Davies Brian & Wright Jan, (2004) Body Knowledge and Control: Studies in the Sociology of Physical Education and Health: Routledge: New York. Fleer Marilyn, (2002) 'Research in Early Childhood Education and Health Is Well Represented in This Issue of Australian Journal of Early Childhood', Australian Journal of Early Childhood. Volume: 27. Issue: 3, p. ii. Gilding Michael, (2006) 'Australian Social Attitudes: The First Report', Australian Journal of Social Issues. Volume: 41. Issue: 2, p. 260. Hayden Jacqueline & Macdonald J. John, (2000) 'Health Promotion: A New Leadership Role for Early Childhood Professionals', Australian Journal of Early Childhood. Volume: 25. Issue: 1, p. 32. Kann Laura, Telljohann K. Susan & Wooley F. Susan, (2007) 'Health Education: Results from the School Health Policies and Programs Study 2006', Journal of School Health. Volume: 77. Issue: 8, p. 408. 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Saunders Peter & Eardley Tony, (2008) 'Australian Journal of Social Issues: Special Issue Devoted to Selected Papers from the 2007 Australian Social Policy Conference', Australian Journal of Social Issues. Volume: 43. Issue: 2, p. 169. Schuller Tom, Preston John, Hammond Cathie, Brassett Angela Grundy & Bynner John, (2004) The Benefits of Learning: The Impact of Education on Health, Family Life, and Social Capital: RoutledgeFalmer: New York. Read More