Factors Impacting Public Health Interventions and Practice
Question
Task Description: Evaluate social, political, ethical, economic and ecological considerations and their impact on public health interventions and practice
Answer
In practical life, it is seen that a person who poor and uneducated, are more prone to health issues. The mortality rate is higher among poor people than in people who are educated and are more economically stable. This reflection assessment will show the various determinants of health which have their own significance to the public health practice and which I have known through my practice.
Social – When it comes to social determinants of health, for me, various factors, such as a person’s income, their development during their childhood including their education, the support that they get from family and society, their gender, etc. are an important factor. There is a huge impact of these factors on a person’s life (Andermann, 2016). For e.g. a person with less education, have less information about the environment he/she is staying in and cannot make a wise decision about what to choose and what not to choose. Similarly, if they do not get a proper support from their family or society, the person feels lonely from inside and is affected by a common health issue, i.e., stress.
Political – There are many political factors too that influence the health of the people in a country. Hence, in my view, it is necessary that the efforts that are taken by the public health system should have a political back-up. This mainly comes from the people whom we elect and who are committed towards us for providing varied resources, and also from the different governmental agencies whose main function is to consider the effects on health in developing education, transportation, agriculture and foreign policy (Azevedo & Vartanian, 2015).
Hence, the political choices that we make have a huge impact on our health and can be said to be a broad determinant of health.
Ethical – Ethics is an important factor in determining the health conditions too. It has a direct impact on people. In certain instances we see that the political issues interferes a lot with the best practices and there are political pressures present that mainly affects the rules associated with the public health and are more inclined towards the issues related to political interest. Moreover, with the increase in population, the health carer finds it difficult in ensuring right services to all at the same time resulting in an impact in the quality of care provided to the people. Along with this, the people should be aware of the nutritional benefits of the food that they are eating, so when it comes to the labelling of the food items, the companies should make sure to label the right nutritional benefits of the food. An adverse practice of this will lead in people purchasing such products which are less beneficial for their health and will result in a bad health (Azevedo & Vartanian, 2015).
Economical – My practice has shown that when it comes to economy, an inequality in it may have a huge impact on a person’s health. For e.g., a person with low income is unable to buy food with higher price and are unable to approach a good health consultant. Hence, they are deprived of many nutritional products and good health care advises. Along with this, there are many people who are low in income, have no job or have other promises to fulfil due to which they are unable to save much for themselves or their family that affects their social connection with other people (Curry, 2005). This creates a less protective health environment around them resulting in a mental and physical impact on their lives.
Ecological factors – When it comes to understanding people’s problem and then improving their health conditions, I find that it is not only dependent upon understanding the perspective of the people but it also depends upon their ecology of health as well as on the connection of their biological, physical, behavioural as well as on their socioenvironmental factors. There are many health models like agent-host-environmental triad that has actually highlighted on the understanding of a person’s ecological factors to keep diseases away. Hence, there are many diseases that are mainly due to the ecology and can be cured only after understanding the ecology of the certain agents instead of the person’s physical or behavioural interventions in taking care of that disease (Lin, et. al., 2007). This can be understood by the example of the places where the water purification is poor and the people are advised to wash their hands on a regular basis. However, when it is not possible to control the environmental factors, it is important that we move to a better option which is in our control, like water purification by the municipality, to improvise the health conditions.
Hence, in my view the above factors are very crucial in the public health and they should be taken into consideration while planning a good health of the residents.
References
Andermann, A. (2016). Taking action on the social determinants of health in clinical practice: a framework for health professionals. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 188(17-18), E474-E483.
Azevedo, S. M., & Vartanian, L. R. (2015). Ethical issues for public health approaches to obesity. Current obesity reports, 4(3), 324-329.
Curry, L. (2005). The Future of the Public's Health in the 21st Century. Generations, 29(2), 82.
Lin, V., Smith, J., Fawkes, S., Robinson, P., & Gifford, S. (2007). Public health practice in Australia: The organised effort. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin
