Public Health Assignment Essay
Directions: For this assignment, you will select and critique one article from a popular media source (e.g., newspaper, magazine, news journal, etc.) that provides information regarding a health disparity within a population group and complete the questions below. Please make sure to use complete sentences when answering each question. Make sure the health disparity is different from your research assignment. In addition, the article must have been published within the last 2 years.Public Health Assignment Essay
1) Provide the article reference and link. (1point)
2) What health disparity is the article highlighting? (1point)
3) Why is this information newsworthy? How would it benefit the public health community? (3 points)
4) What causes and factors contributed to the health disparity? (2 points)
5) How does the health disparity affect health outcomes? (3 points)
6) Does the article make any recommendations or suggest resources that could benefit the public? If not, what suggestions or recommendations would you suggest? (2 points)
7) Was the article well-written? Justify your rationale? (3 points)
8) Did it include all pertinent information? Justify your rationale? (2 points)
9) Was there information or a perspective that the article should have included? If so, what? What else would you have like to have seen? (3 points)Public Health Assignment Essay
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.Public Health Assignment Essay
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.
Public health promotes and protects the health of people and the communities where they live, learn, work and play.
While a doctor treats people who are sick, those of us working in public health try to prevent people from getting sick or injured in the first place. We also promote wellness by encouraging healthy behaviors.
From conducting scientific research to educating about health, people in the field of public health work to assure the conditions in which people can be healthy. That can mean vaccinating children and adults to prevent the spread of disease. Or educating people about the risks of alcohol and tobacco. Public health sets safety standards to protect workers and develops school nutrition programs to ensure kids have access to healthy food.
Public health works to track disease outbreaks, prevent injuries and shed light on why some of us are more likely to suffer from poor health than others. The many facets of public health include speaking out for laws that promote smoke-free indoor air and seat belts, spreading the word about ways to stay healthy and giving science-based solutions to problems.public Health Assignment Essay
Thanks to public health initiatives, in the past century alone we have increased the life expectancy of U.S. citizens by nearly 30 years. Still, AIDS alone has taken the lives of some 35 million people throughout the world, and the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 1.3 million people die every year from the negative effects of air pollution.
Despite the significant strides in public health, health disparities still exist, leading to populations that are disproportionately affected by disease. These populations may have limited access to affordable healthcare, putting them at greater risk of developing chronic diseases, such as obesity and heart disease.
In other words, there is still much work to be done in the field of public health. Professionals in public health, whether they are working at the local or global level, are committed to ensuring that healthcare is accessible to all segments of society.
The Goals and Objectives of Public Health Initiatives
Public health is a science that is aimed at protecting and improving the health of individuals, communities and greater populations, which may be as small as a neighborhood or as big as a region of the world.public Health Assignment Essay
Regardless of the size of the populations they serve, public health professionals, work to prevent health problems from occurring or reoccurring, and mitigate the effects when problems do occur. They accomplish this task through educational programs, the creation and implementation of policies, the administration of services, and through research. Therefore, a major objective of public health is to promote healthcare equity, quality, and accessibility.
The objectives of public health may be carried out through public or private endeavors, and many times efforts are coordinated among a number of private and public entities. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the goal of public health is to prevent disease, promote health, and prolong life among the population as a whole. Therefore, public health initiatives are aimed at fostering conditions in which people can be healthy within specific populations.public Health Assignment Essay
The World Health Organization recognizes the main objectives of public health initiatives to be:
- To assess and monitor the health of communities and populations at risk so as to identify health problems and priorities
- To formulate public policies designed to solve local and national health problems and priorities
- To assure that all populations have access to cost-effective and appropriate care, which includes health promotion and disease prevention services
In short, the goals of public health are to save money, improve the quality of life, help children thrive, and reduce human suffering by:
- Assuring the quality and accessibility of health services
- Preventing epidemics and the spread of disease
- Preventing injuries
- Promoting and encouraging healthy behaviors
- Protecting against environmental hazards
- Responding to disasters and assisting communities in recovery
Examining the Components of Public Health
Public health can be distinguished from healthcare in that instead of treating diseases and injuries, one patient at a time, public health is focused on preventing disease and injury in communities and populations. In other words, public health professionals are motivated to identify the cause of disease and disability and implement solutions to address these causes.
A good example of healthcare versus public health is that a medical practitioner would treat a gunshot wound, while a public health professional would work to identify the systemic causes of gun violence and look for solutions. Similarly, while a medical professional would prescribe medication to treat high cholesterol, a public health professional would examine causes of obesity and high cholesterol and work to implement programs to encourage healthy lifestyle changes among populations.public Health Assignment Essay
Public health encompasses a wide array of topics and issues, such as chronic disease, the science of aging, mental health, injury prevention, disaster response, and tobacco control. Just a few of the contemporary topics in public health include:
- Developing emergency preparedness plans
- Examining the dangers of secondhand tobacco smoke exposure
- Identifying ways to stop bullying in schools
- Improving technologies that make clean drinking water available
- Investigating the consequences of antibiotic use in industrial agriculture
- Promoting family planning and reproductive health programs and policies
- Promoting policies that protect the global environment
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services identifies 10 essential public health services:
- Monitor health status so as to identify and solve community health problems
- Diagnose and investigate health hazards and health problems in a community
- Educate and empower people about contemporary health issues
- Inspire and support community partnerships to identify and solve health problems
- Set policies and plans in motion so as to support individual and community health efforts
- Enforce laws and regulations that are designed to protect the safety and health of communities
- Pair people to beneficial personal health services
- Provide a competent public and personal healthcare workforce
- Evaluate the effectiveness and the quality of personal and population-based health services
- Engage in ongoing research to discover innovative solutions and new insights to health problems
The public health system consists of official government public health agencies, private-sector business, and nonprofit organizations. The entities of the public health infrastructure in the U.S. include:public Health Assignment Essay
- More than 3,000 county and city health departments and local boards of health
- About 59 state, territorial, and island nation health departments
- A number of U.S. public health services agencies (HHS, CDC, EPA, FDA, OSHA, etc.)
- Tribal health agencies (coordinated by the Indian Health Service)
- More than 160,000 public and private laboratories
- Hospitals and private-sector healthcare providers
- National volunteer organizations (American Red Cross, American Cancer Society, American Diabetes Association, etc.)
- State and local volunteer organizations
The History of Public Health in America
Although public health efforts in the U.S. have been around for centuries, the organized mission of public health has its roots in the mid-nineteenth century when physicians, reformers, advocates, and scientists came together to address issues that grew out of urbanization, industrialization, and large-scale immigration.
Public health issues at the time, which were often referred to as “conditions of the poor,” were focused on the social and environmental causes and consequences of disease. For example, civic leaders in Chicago focused on the relationship between living conditions and the declining health and well being of workers, women, and children.
Public health solutions included indoor plumbing in housing, tenement laws, housing density laws, and nuisance laws, all of which had a dramatic impact on lowering the rates of tuberculosis and other diseases. Other laws that governed foodstuffs, meat, and milk soon followed, while in rural areas, yellow fever, pellagra, and malaria were addressed through a number of engineering and social reforms.public Health Assignment Essay
Fast-forward to the twentieth century, when disease epidemics were soon replaced with cancers and chronic illnesses. Land use and transportation improved accessibility to healthcare, although it also created new hazards and diseases due to the exposure to chemicals; air, water, and soil pollution; and toxic materials like lead paint and tobacco.
The National Health Act of 1939 supported public health through the construction of new hospitals and clinics, particularly in economically distressed areas. Around the same time, the American Public Health Association passed a resolution that all public health agencies should provide the following (referred to as the Basic 6):
- Collecting data on vital statistics
- Controlling communicable diseases
- Ensuring environmental sanitation
- Offering maternal, infant, and child health services
- Providing education to promote healthy behaviors
- Providing laboratory services for the diagnoses of illnesses
As years progressed, science and medicine became the focus, thus allowing public health officials to ignore a number of social factors. New medical technologies, such as antibiotics, vaccines, and psychotropic medication allowed officials to attack disease without disrupting the social order. In 1970, however, this all changed when Paul Corney, the first African American president of the American Public Health Association, made an attack on what he perceived as complacency in his profession. His address called for more aggressive action against a host of health problems that were part of the modern, industrial society.public Health Assignment Essay
Since then public health has shifted dramatically, addressing a vast array of public health problems. In 1988, the Institute of Medicine published its renowned report, The Future of Public Health, which resulted in population-based strategies for improving community health efforts to control epidemics, reduce vaccine-preventable diseases, ensure safe food and water, improve maternal and child health, and conduct studies of health problems.public Health Assignment Essay