Keeping People Well with Effective Public Health Practice

In this assignment I am going to describe the origins of public health in the UK from the 19th century to the present day. I am also going to compare historical and current features of public health.

Leading on from this looking at the case study of Renee (Open University, 2014a) by using the Dynamic Model of Wellbeing I was able to understand Renee’s situation with a lot more clarity of her situation. Renee is a single mother with four children and also lives with her eighty-year-old mother who has ill health. Renee works but with poor pay and barely enough income to support her family. By using the guidelines of the model I was able to establish that she had poor external conditions with her work and income also her living standards were poor within her home. Her personal resources such as her health suffered due to her external conditions, her optimism was low and so was her self-esteem, being behind with bills and ill affording the

1. ‘Health’ and ‘Wellbeing’ are related but different concepts. Explore them in relation to the ways in which social policy provision might be able to promote them.

For second part of reading response, I choose to report on Promoting public understanding of public health article by our professor Stephen Bezruchka. I really enjoyed reading the article he wrote about how people in the America are being less healthy than those people in other rich nations. Promoting public awareness about this topic should be high priority for all Public Health majors. Health is the most important part of human life and it surprising to me that people in America are not really doing anything to change it. Solving this problem need individual supports and public supports.

Poverty as defined by The World Bank (2000:15) is ‘pronounced deprivation in well-being’. Well being on the other hand is maintaining a good

Public health approaches distinguishes the role played by outside factors that influence individuals and their immediate health system. The established programs, policies and services that are trying to create supportive health within a wide range of social and economic contexts seek to empower many to exercise control over their own health and improve the ability to work together within their profession. For example health promoting schools collaborate together to protect the health of students through a supportive school environment, these programs include Mind Matters which looks at the mental health and wellbeing of young people. Overall this positively influences young people as it promotes for a supportive health environment as it advocates so a broad range of people for all different areas of life although similar to the Lifestyle and behavioural approaches it allows for individuals

While both medical care and public health work to improve the lives of many people, there are several distinctions between the two fields. Healthcare providers such as nurses and doctors are responsible for diagnosing and treating illnesses for individual patients. The care ranges from minor injuries to severe and chronic diseases. Meanwhile, public health strives to improve the well-being of a population. Public health advocates for the overall “promotion and prevention” of diseases before it even becomes an issue for healthcare providers. Public health encourages people to adopt healthy lifestyle choices and strives to control the outbreak of diseases. Although public health is often overlooked in the grand scale of medical care, it is undoubtedly the main aspect in ensuring that the overall health of a community is prospering.

Public health as it is implicated in the lives of the community – it is important to conceptualise what this might mean. Moreover, public health has seen as a multidiscipline perspective in which it can be defined on many levels, and I find that it could be elusive to understand its meaning. By simple understanding of public health, I refer to an approach derived by Winslow (1920) and Baggott (2000).

In this article I am going to describe the key features of public health strategies as they relate to current times in the UK.

Improving the health conditions of the American population ensures the increased quality of life. People eat for various reasons with the fundamental reason being for survival purposes. However, the issue of eating to live and living to eat affects people in different manners as most people develop poor eating habits that affect the body’s nutritional intake and affects their health. Being healthy involves careful considerations of what one is eating and engaging in activities that contribute to better healthy lives that do not imply daily prescriptions or

The following international, national, and local agencies are aimed at keeping the public safe while seeking optimum health and well-being for all citizens involved. They provide assessments, develop policies, assurance, meet unmet needs, and enable access to health care (McCowan, 2013). They hone communities’ capabilities to respond effectually to health issues by shielding and endorsing the health of the community and its residents (McKenzie & Pinger, 2016-b).

It is crucial to understand what makes a community healthy, as public health is concerned with health promotion of population rather than an individual focus (Department of Health (DOH) 2012). Wanless (2004) defines public health as a “science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting through the organised effort and informed of the society, organisations, communities and individuals”. It focuses on an entire population addressing the health needs of the population, working in a partnership with an individual, communities, health worker, health agencies and

Wellbeing is ‘generally understood as the quality of people’s lives. It is a dynamic state that is enhanced when people can fulfil their personal and social goals. It is understood both in relation to objective measures, such as household income, educational resources and health status; and subjective indicators such as happiness, perceptions of quality of life and life satisfaction, (Statham and Chase 2010).’ It is important to acknowledge many factors play a role in measuring childhood well-being but it is necessary to look at both positive and negative indicators in orders to get a realistic overview as well as an overall understanding of well-being as a whole. Throughout the course of this essay both subjective and objective aspects of children’s well-being will be discussed as well as how the value of measuring both aspects can enable us to gain a holistic understanding of childhood well-being.

Dominique Robert’s (2008) theoretical framework in the article “Prison and/as Public Health. Prison and Inmates as Vectors of Health in the New Public Health Era. The Case of Canadian Penitentiaries” focuses on structural elements that explain the use of correctional health care in the prison setting today and how this plays a role in the broader public health strategies in the outside community. He does this by explaining factors such as “the mobilisation of prison as a tool for the new public health” and "the production of inmates into healthcare ‘consumers’, along with the role of actuarial justice.”

Public health as field of practice is the application of those principle and value in making public health decision. In doing so, the core function of public health is narrow to three functions. - identifying problem - determine alternatives