a personal look at public health essay

a personal look at public health essay

The Importance of Public Health Education

1. Introduction

Public health education is considered by many to be a luxury. Historical initiatives seldom involved educating the public on defined hygienic behaviors, but rather concentrated on ensuring clean water and containing infectious diseases. Public health has never been more significant than it is today, yet it is still not a well-acknowledged concept by many individuals. In an age when new diseases are emerging and healthcare is being offered in the most varied of ways, public health’s relevance is a predominant issue. It is widely believed that investing in health as a society will lead to reduced medical costs and a healthier and more productive population. This essay will firstly explore how health education has developed through the years. It will look at the various models of health and illness and will highlight certain factors which have led to the importance of educating the public on health. The second part of this essay will discuss how the UK’s National Health Service has begun focusing more on health promotion in recent years and the various tools it is using to do so. Health promotion and health education share a common goal, but the methods of achieving this goal are at present quite diverse. Consequently, this essay will discuss how both these changes in NHS policy and the growing relationship between them have a significant benefit for public health both in present times and in the future.

2. The Impact of Public Health on Individuals

Doctors, medical and dental specialists, hospital nurses, etc., are concerned with primary prevention when dealing with a patient who is considered to be susceptible to a particular disability. For example, efforts to restore the teeth and gums to a state of health may be considered preventive action with regard to a dental disability. Such action should be directed at the susceptibles among schoolchildren, and the immediate impact to the community is negligible. The dental specialist may best fulfill his task by advising school authorities about the necessity of supervising the teeth of the schoolchildren and by teaching school nurses and teachers to provide simple preventive measures and regular inspection. This advice and teaching are public health activities directed at the improvement of the oral health of the community, with special care for the prevention of dental disability in children. The sort of education given by the dental specialist to those working with children would be termed a form of individual protection. It becomes public health action when conveyed to school nurses and teachers. The dental specialist’s advice and teaching as preventive measures for dental disability in children will be the equivalent of specific protection when he is dealing with high susceptibility children and providing treatment which may arrest existing lesions or prevent the development of new ones.

This question concerns the effect of injury or disease on an individual. Hurt has been defined as “the sum of changes in a person brought about by his encounter with environmental factors which may result in disease”. The main concern of medicine is with disease in the form of deviations from the normal structure and function of the human body. A doctor examines his patient, diagnoses the trouble, and prescribes treatment in an attempt to restore health. Similar activities are undertaken by many public health workers in dealing with individual cases, especially those who are suffering from some disability. Thus, public health and medicine have objectives in common, though the way of reaching them may be different.

Impact on the individuals

3. The Role of Public Health in Communities

2. The first step is to address and solve current issues within a defined community. Descriptive, as opposed to analytic, epidemiology is used to achieve this. To do this, data is collected and set out from various sources by several methods. Vital statistics provide us with measurable and objective data concerning the health of a community. This will be useful to compare different parts of the UK. Other sources, such as surveillance and monitoring; health needs assessment; national and local comparative data; and systematic reviews and RCTs, also offer an insight. Smallpox and its eradication in the 18th century with the use of variolation and vaccination, as well as the increase in survival rates of pediatric cancers, have been highlighted as major successes from the application of public health measures in this way.

1. A review of history has shown that major public health problems can be addressed and solved. Passages from the Bible, paintings from the Middle Ages, and tombstone inscriptions provide evidence that suggest the provision of clean water has probably been the single most important public health measure in preventing disease. The development and provision of vaccination, sanitation, and health education are also highlighted from their start to finish. The eradication of smallpox, polio, and improvements in sanitation in the UK have greatly benefited the general public’s health. To identify and solve current health problems, as well as predicting, preventing, and planning for the future, public health uses a multidisciplinary approach. This will involve various sectors in and out of the health services. With this and social justice in mind, public health is about preserving and extending life.

4. Challenges in Public Health

Globalization presents a new challenge to public health, whether it is a threat to health security (such as bioterrorism or the spread of new diseases) or the growing trend of migration, which may affect the spread of disease and available services in a given country. In many ways, the state of global public health presents greater challenges and fewer prospects than it did over a century ago, before the advent of medicines and technologies that are now a vital part of the status quo for developed countries. With new diseases on the rise and old diseases becoming resistant to treatment, the job of providing effective and equitable health care has become an intricate process. Today’s public health educators must respond to the growing diversity of the populations with which they work in a more technologically advanced and globalized world. This requires an understanding of how cultures define and perceive health and illness, as well as an awareness of how to incorporate these varied understandings into different health interventions.

With the ever-increasing diversity of the U.S. population, health care providers and organizations will need to have a greater understanding of the health beliefs and practices of different cultures if they are to provide adequate care to all people. The Institute of Medicine recently issued a report calling for all health professionals to be educated about cultural competence. The report defined the culturally competent provider as having the ability to effectively work in a cross-cultural context, the awareness and acceptance of cultural differences, and the adaptation of care to meet the clients’ culture-specific needs (Betancourt, 2003). This is a major paradigm shift for public health education, as it calls for a more comprehensive and tailored approach to educating and practicing public health. In the past, cultural competence and related issues were often addressed in the context of separate special populations. For example, providers might be trained in how to work with African American or Latino communities. Today, and certainly in the future, the challenge is to train and practice in a way that is relevant to the care of all individuals, regardless of their age, gender, economic status, ethnicity, or race.

Although great improvements have been made in the field of public health, many obstacles exist, from politics to access to resources to issues of social justice. One of the most pressing issues that the United States faces today is making health care and public health a right for all people, not just a privilege for the wealthy. In recent years, there has been a great deal of debate over the appropriate way to address issues of health care, which affect all citizens, and issues of public health, which overwhelmingly affect poor and vulnerable populations.

5. Conclusion

The knowledge of educated patients might help themselves and also help the health professionals choose the best treatment that is more effective and efficient, and this will result in lower treatment costs. This is because the morbidity condition of the illness will decrease and it will free up some resources for use in other public health services.

The reason is that they know how to prevent illnesses and the morbidity condition of the illness. This is because when they educate their patients, they will also educate them about the causes of the illness, how to prevent it, and the type of illness they have. This also helps the patients know when they should seek treatment and what type of treatment they need.

So based on the review of the information provided, you can see that the effects of lack of health education might have on communities. Since the health professionals, especially the public health educators, educate their patients of various communities on how to maintain a healthy lifestyle, they help prevent some illnesses or injuries and also make some illness or injury symptoms milder.