public health news
The Importance of Public Health News
By ensuring the health and safety of the population, there are many benefits to public health. This includes an increase in life expectancy, a reduction in crime, and an improvement in the level of education. Public health can also be considered a wise investment, with evidence showing that for every £1 spent on targeted public health interventions, the NHS saves £14.
Public health has evolved over a long history to encompass a wide range of explanations of health, ranging from the Biomedical Model to the Socio-environmental perspective. While various health issues have been the target of public health interventions, the most basic job of the field remains to prevent health problems from happening or recurring. This can be achieved through monitoring of cases and health indicators, through the implementation and evaluation of health policies, and by promoting healthy behaviors. In some cases, the only way to guarantee the safety and health of the population is legislation and control. For example, laws on water and air quality, or regarding the sale of tobacco, alcohol, and unhealthy foods.
Public health is composed of many public and private organizations at all levels. These include healthcare providers, such as the local doctor, an emergency medical technician, or hospital workers, public health charities and voluntary organizations, and those involved in the governing and policy-making of the NHS, such as the Department of Health or a local health authority. It also has its own healthcare discipline. With more than 400 occupational specialties, public health offers a wide range of job opportunities.
The role of public health in society is to improve, protect, and promote the health and safety of the population. It represents a blend of both science and art as it uses medical knowledge and information from social sciences to improve the health of the population. Public health cares for the population as a whole, including the vulnerable, and it is part of the government’s responsibility to protect and improve the health of its people. With the threats to the health of today’s population, it is necessary for people to understand where public health stands today and its role in the community.
Public health news combats insensitivity to the stark reality of the consequences of a current attitude and often provides a moral or ethical viewpoint to individuals unfamiliar with the problems being addressed within public health news. This type of news can change opinions and mold the character of the one reading or watching the story. It gives a great opportunity for individuals to contemplate and weigh the pros and cons of the current attitudes or policies regarding that issue. At times, seeing the effects and consequences of what is currently going on in the world on the news will provide an incentive for change. Because many people are unaware of the sheer gravity of these problems, the effect that it is having on our world, or the impact that it will have on the future if things do not change, the only way to get people to realize that something is a very serious or dangerous issue is to educate them. And what better platform to use than public health news?
Facts from media, big and small, have influence over the coverage process. But there may be limited literature that directly tackles media impact on policy. According to the problem-attention model, an issue must gain prominence before it gains traction on the policy agenda. Kahane and DiMaggio observed an association between the growth in the visibility of environmental organization interest and a proportional concentration of newspaper coverage. While not a direct measure of media effect, these findings suggest increased presence in the coverage of an issue. While the increased visibility of an issue does not guarantee that it will be acted upon, it is usually believed that issues that receive prominent coverage are more likely to receive policy attention.
Public health news plays a robust role in policy construction because the first goal of most policies is to shield or improve the health and welfare of populations. Creating evidence of the matter can frequently stimulate policy action. Policy might also alter poorly understood risk factors when new facts shift medical perceptions. Research findings and their relative significance can be influenced by media attention; public health information can serve as a stimulant for further investigations. However, the impact of media can present troubles for the researcher when information coverage generates contradictory or misleading information.
Infectious diseases have no boundaries and can spread to several countries, with the SARS outbreak teaching us that failure to control such diseases can result in major economic hardship. Efforts of the global public health community in such events have led to multilateral coordination with the WHO and have led to the International Health Regulations, which will come into force in June 2007. The agreements made by all 192 member states give major responsibility to each individual state in controlling public health but also allow for WHO help in doing so. The idea here is that all countries should have measures of preparedness, and with these regulations, plans are set in place to identify and respond to all potential public health events. This will require effective surveillance. Public health surveillance is the ongoing systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of outcome-specific data for the purpose of early detection of health-related events, which is then followed by control and prevention measures. It is imperative that information on such events is accurate and timely as it affects what decisions will be made from the surveillance data.
Accurate and timely health information is crucial during health emergencies such as the Ebola crisis or during natural disasters such as the tsunami in Aceh, Indonesia. When public health issues come to the forefront, the need for understanding the data and making informed decisions is crucial. For the CDC, this was evident during the anthrax bioterrorism event when data was coming from multiple sources and their “information was changing by the hour, and we were dealing with a climate of uncertainty and fear.” When vast amounts of individual media are reporting on issues in various manners, it can be difficult to glean what information is reliable. The SARS outbreak and West Nile Virus epidemics enabled a window of opportunity for public health in demonstrating its value for society and, in return, highlighted the need for global public health surveillance.
Luckily, with the increasing shift from print to more online sources for news, there is hope that non-profit organizations may provide public health news with funding. The majority of public health news can easily be accessed by an international audience as well. With work, public health news may be able to make more direct benefits from the impressionable public audiences it is trying to reach, and solid funding could represent a healthier population worldwide.
On a more positive note, there is growth in various non-profit organizations that are dedicated to providing quality health news to the public. Some non-profit organizations are promoting more public involvement by creating interactive contests on public health to increase awareness and garner support. For instance, the Kaiser Family Foundation, releasing information on their recent healthcare policy and changes, is dedicated to politics and journalism in healthcare through the analysis and public understanding of their private information by various programs and website information.
As a result, many newspapers have reduced the amount of original content they produce and often “dumb down” the news they do cover to remain politically correct and maintain access to a wide audience. However, many newspapers have now sought to improve the quality of their health news by not only trying to maintain the high standards of their current brand but also increase emphasis on building new healthcare programs to make sure their readers understand the associated health issues.
As there is a continually growing problem to find new and reliable funding, the future of public health news will be relatively turbulent. This is a direct result of the rapid declining of current print media sources and the difficulty in securing funding for new sources to come. Print newspapers have done rather shabbily in creating new and viable revenue sources as a result of declining subscription and advertising sales.
We offer essay help by crafting highly customized papers for our customers. Our expert essay writers do not take content from their previous work and always strive to guarantee 100% original texts. Furthermore, they carry out extensive investigations and research on the topic. We never craft two identical papers as all our work is unique.
Our capable essay writers can help you rewrite, update, proofread, and write any academic paper. Whether you need help writing a speech, research paper, thesis paper, personal statement, case study, or term paper, Homework-aider.com essay writing service is ready to help you.
You can order custom essay writing with the confidence that we will work round the clock to deliver your paper as soon as possible. If you have an urgent order, our custom essay writing company finishes them within a few hours (1 page) to ease your anxiety. Do not be anxious about short deadlines; remember to indicate your deadline when placing your order for a custom essay.
To establish that your online custom essay writer possesses the skill and style you require, ask them to give you a short preview of their work. When the writing expert begins writing your essay, you can use our chat feature to ask for an update or give an opinion on specific text sections.
Our essay writing service is designed for students at all academic levels. Whether high school, undergraduate or graduate, or studying for your doctoral qualification or master’s degree, we make it a reality.
