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Reflective Essay On Public Health

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I did not always know what public health was, mainly because it was not an apparent career path in my community. However, even without knowing what to call it, I witnessed how the lack of public health in my mother’s life was a hinderance to her success. The presence of a sex education program would have been the difference between my mother graduating from high school or becoming a teenage mother. In my community, I observed the presence of Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) clinics helping teenagers after they are mothers, but there was a lack of educational resources to prevent the occurrence of unplanned teenage pregnancy all together. This lack of resources influenced my participation in Peer Health Exchange (PHE) during college. This organization provided public health education to teenagers from low income backgrounds, which ultimately lowered their risk of unwanted health outcomes. During my time at PHE, I learned that communities of low socioeconomic backgrounds still experienced high rates of health issues despite having qualified physicians available to them. This was especially the exhibited scenario in my own community, which mostly consisted of immigrants. The community’s system of reparative health care, in which patients were primarily given treatment after diagnosis, was not effective at lowering their negative health outcomes. These communities lacked holistic interventions that would enable them to have complete physical, mental, and social well-being.

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