System Thinking Assignment:Growth Rate OfAsthma Affected People In Australia

Question

Task: Context:
Public health professionals must work across various sectors and with key stakeholders such as other professionals and community groups in order to improve health outcomes. Often, these stakeholders have competing interests and conflicting ideas about health, and about what would be the most effective ways to meet public health needs and outcomes. Stakeholders may not even share the same values related to improving public health. In some cases, using a system thinking or intersectoral approach may pose many challenges for implementation.

Instructions:
To prepare for this system thinking assignment, choose one public health issue (e.g. obesity, a chronic disease) in any country for which it is obvious that a system thinking approach has not been, or is not being, applied. Then in approximately 1000 words (+/- 10%): • Describe the public health issue.

• Explain the roles of stakeholders, both within the health system and in other sectors in addressing this issue.
• Drawing on research evidence, explain the obstacles that are preventing the application of a systems thinking approach to this issue.
• Based on the literature, offer suggestions (e.g. new governance arrangements) for how a system thinking approach could be applied to this issue.

Answer

Introduction
System thinking is a fundamental approach that is more efficient than some tools and methods to mitigate the general issues within the health care system in Australia. In addition, to mitigate the health issues of asthma, the approach of system thinking is essential to effectively discover the potent challenges and issues regarding asthma. Therefore, now, the health system in Australia has decided to use the system thinking approach within their system (Patankar, & Brown, 2019, December, p. 151165). Through implementing this approach, the health systems will be able to get available options due to prominently solve the issues in public health.

Figure 1: System Thinking Approach
(Source: Patankar, & Brown, 2019, December, p. 151165)

Brief Discussion of Asthma and its Mitigating
Approaches and Analysis of the Challenges during the Implementation of Approach

Description of Public Health Issue
Throughout the air pollution, tobacco smoking, indoor and outdoor allergens viral respiratory infection, the humans got affected by asthma. Commonly, asthma is a chronic condition, which significantly affects the breathing passage of the human body that carries the air in our lungs. After the affection of this disease, people get significant interruption during their breathing. 27% of Australian child got affected by asthma during the year of 1997, and since then the affection rate in Australia significantly enhance by 1.4% per annum. Moreover, approximately 2.7 million Australian people, which are 11% of the total population in Australia, got affected by asthma in between the year of 2017 and 2018 (Ramsahai & Wark, 2018, p. S20). Nowadays, due to the industrialisation and air pollution has been increased;therefore, the females extensively got affected by asthma than the males regarding their immunity system from 2017 to 2018.Therefore, the Australian government has taken the decision to mitigate the issue of asthma through negotiating the health care systems of the country to implement a system thinking approach to prominently deal with this issue.

Figure 2: Prevalence of Asthma by Age and Sex Group
(Source: Australian Institute of Health & Welfare, 2020)

Explanation of Stakeholders and their Roles in Health System
The stakeholders regarding mitigate the effectiveness of the disease, prominently provide efforts to make stronger the immunity system of Australian people.

Table 1: Stakeholders and their Roles and Responsibilities

Implementation and Drawing of System Thinking Map in the Health Sector

(Source: As created by author)

The above-drawn diagram portraits that, the stakeholders like the government and private healthcare sectors (R3) are very concern about to cure (S) the asthma patients intensely through providing emergency room (B1)for treatment to all the patients of asthma. The public like volunteers, etc. which are also included in the stakeholder term are providing their efficient service to the asthma affected (O) patients for their intense cure with providing preventive medicines (B2). In this way, the system thinking approach helps the country to get success for mitigating the effects of asthma.

Analysis of the Challenges during the Implementation of System Thinking Approach
Now-a-day, the Australian government has put its focus on implementing the system thinking approach within the healthcare system to efficiently fight with the disease of asthma. However, due to the carelessness of the people, most of the residence still survives with asthma. Some of the people do not go to the hospital or the other healthcare sector to get the ultimate treatment to roundly cure of the disease (Pandey & Kumar, 2016, p. 30). Due to their careless behaviour with asthma, some of the people got death due to potent interruption within their breathing system. In this way, the growth rate of asthma affected people is increasing during this time.

Conclusion
Throughout the evaluation of the entire study, it is concluded that the system thinking approach is most significant in Australia due to which, the country could get effective outcome regarding the mitigation of asthma. The growth rate of asthma infected people has enhanced during the year 2017 to 2018. Therefore, the stakeholders like the Australian government, health minister, NGO’s, public and private association, healthcare sectors, etc. has focused to implement the system thinking approach to potentially deal with the disease like asthma. This will helps to reduce the effectiveness of this chronicle disease from the country.

Recommendation
Australia has not got the appropriate outcome by implementing the system thinking approach due to potentially fight with the disease like asthma. There are some other strategies like self-care strategy that has been implemented in the UK, through which, the country got a significant outcome to mitigate asthma. Therefore, in this aspect, the Australian government also needs to adopt some strategies like the UK to efficiently deal with the disease.

References
Australian Institute of Health & Welfare., (2020). Asthma. Retrieved from https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/chronic-respiratory-conditions/asthma. [Accessed on: 14.10.2020].

Holmes, C. (2018). Stakeholder views on the role of spiritual care in Australian hospitals: An exploratory study. Health Policy, 122(4), 389-395.

Pandey, A., & Kumar, A. (2016). System Thinking Approach to Deal with Sustainability Challenges. System thinking assignment System, 29, 30.

Patankar, M. S., & Brown, J. P. (2019, December). Adapting systems thinking and safety reporting in high-consequence industries to healthcare. In Seminars in perinatology (Vol. 43, No. 8, p. 151180). WB Saunders.

Ramsahai, J. M., & Wark, P. A. (2018). Appropriate use of oral corticosteroids for severe asthma. Medical Journal of Australia, 209(S2), S18-S21.