Responsibility For Health : The Health Of Our Country And The Ways We Can Enhance Both Aspects

Adewale Troutman promotes individual responsibility along with the context of social determinants. These two issues are linked because they go hand and hand with one another. We cannot blame an individual for their choices if we don’t look at how they live. Those with a higher educational level and financial stability have better health outcomes just by the way they live their every day lives. Individuals who have always lived pay check to pay check, who are always under stress, and have never had a day off in their lives can’t change how they live. They’re honestly just getting by and that’s all they know how to do.

What about taking matters into our own hands? Desiderius Erasmus, a 15th century catholic priest and philosopher, said: "Prevention is better than cure". What can WE do to avoid health issues or minimize their impact on our well-being? The purpose of this website is answering the above question. There is a myriad of ways to do just that. And a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single

This means that people need to realise that most of the policies that affect health are not concerns for the health agencies. Health is a responsibility for each sector of government. The second strategy is to create supportive environments. This is so people have the opportunity to realise that they are in fact healthy individuals. Supportive environments are important because social, physical, environmental and economic factors contribute to people’s health experiences.

As stated by the World Health Organization (WHO), ‘health’ is defined as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (WHO, 1948). The health and wellbeing of individuals is generally determined by their circumstances and environment, a phenomenon referred to as the social determinants of health. WHO describes the social determinants of health as:

With health risks on the rise, and people getting careless, a change needs to take place. Our society is built upon freedom, but in some cases that freedom needs to be restricted. A simple choice throughout someone's day can affect the health of everyone around them. Even though freedom is one of the most important things in life, the public health has a wide outcome that could affect the rest of the world. Public health should be put before freedom because it affects more than one person, determines the generations to come, and this is what laws are based upon..

The determinants of health are economic and social conditions that affect people’s health status. These influence the living and working conditions that impacts people’s everyday living condition. Factors such as the place and the environment we live in, genetics, educational level or work status and income, as well as friends and family are some of the aspects that affects our health condition. On the other hand, the people that have an access to good health care and have financial stability are less susceptible and are often less affected. (NANB, 2009)

Healthy People 2020 is a promotion to help raise public awareness by providing measureable objectives and goals for individuals to obtain higher qualities of lives, decrease premature deaths, and promote a higher quality of life (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2014). Healthy People 2020 has monitored its progress for over three decades between communities over the nation to understand where prevention measures are needed most. Fielding, Teutsch, & Koh (2012) projected that Healthy People 2020 will project a greater emphasis on social needs when it comes to health care disparities and will focus on education and income across the reform. One strength I noticed, when navigating through U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

According to Dennis Raphael, the conditions that overcome lifestyle activities such as daily smoking, physical activity, and eating habits are living and working conditions an individual endures daily (2016). In Canada, and in many countries just like it, focuses a lot on the biomedical approach which looks at treatment of disease, rather than prevention and the behavioural approach that is every individualized and its main target is to prevent disease through cultivating a lifestyle that encourages activities that work towards it (Raphael, 2016). These approaches aren’t the most effective because people continue to deteriorate as they require to work multiple precarious jobs that have a very poor condition and still not being able to live their fullest potential due to several barriers such as low wages (Raphael, 2016). This has a lot to do with how a society distributes social and economic resources among its citizens which shape the overall health and well-being of these people (Raphael, 2016). The chapter presents various frameworks that correlate with each other to influence health outcomes which all have a lot in common (Raphael, 2016). Such as the materialist framework discusses how the social determinants of health impact individual’s health outcomes by looking at

In Health Disparities in the United States: Social Class, Race, Ethnicity, and Health - Edition 1 by Donald Barr, the author explores the questions, “What is health? How should we define it? How should we measure it?” Barr addresses the “danger of approaching health as a moral imperative” and references Faith Fitzgerald, who points out the “tyranny of health”, where those who are unhealthy in some way are deemed to have behaved poorly. The author explains that people cannot be judged for their bad habits and resulting poor health2. Yet, in some cases, how can people not be held liable for their poor decisions? It is unfair to burden those citizens who make healthy lifestyle decisions with the health care costs of those who have made detrimental choices and behave in manners that create risks to their health and wellbeing. This essay will address voluntary health risks and preventable health care costs. People should be held reliable for the

I think that Americans should be held responsible for their own health outcomes. However, some illnesses that people may have could not be their fault. With that said, I do not think it is fair for someone to be held responsible if the risk factors cannot be changed. For instance, a person could develop heart disease by being a male, heredity, or increasing age (Hahn, Payne, & Lucas, 2013). To further explain my example, I do not think someone who develops a disease from risk factors that cannot be changed. However, if someone smokes or is overweight, which are risk factors that can be changed to reduce the risks of heart disease. If a person chooses not to change their bad health habits, then at this point, they should be held responsible for their own health outcomes. Another example of why someone should be held responsible for their own health outcomes is if the person smokes. Smoking is not only dangerous to the smoker’s health, but it is

This is assignment is to review and reflect on your own personal values and beliefs which shapes how you interpret and analyze population health. The purpose of this paper is to reflect on how you see your role as a healthcare professional in advocating for, and influencing population health. Describe the connection of this role to public health and address your thoughts around the influence that health care providers may have or not, in promoting the health of the community. What role should heath care providers play, and what strategies may increase the influence of healthcare providers in improving population health? This assignment can be approached from a clinical, academic or public health focus.

With the huge diversity and changeability of human biology, it is impossible to imagine a reality without some mutations, changes, or issues in the organs and tissues of humans. Thus, it rightly follows that medications and pharmaceuticals have been created in an effort to counteract the various ailments and illnesses that people can experience. However, as time has gone on and these pharmaceuticals have become more and more high-tech, regulated, and trusted, they have also become incredibly commercialized. Worse still, medications have become incredibly expensive and can be unattainable for some people.

To understand the concept of population health, it is first important to understand what defines health. The World Health Organization defines health as “the state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (WHO, 1946). This definition implies that the experience of health is a highly personal one and impacted by multiple factors both internal and external to the individual. Population, on the other hand, is defined by Caldwell (1996) as a “large mass of people constituting some kind of definable unit to which measurements pertain” (p.306). Multiple

In recent discussion of obesity, a controversial issue has been whether there should be involvement of society and the government. On one hand, some argue that obese people harm everyone, therefore, everyone should be involved. One the other hand, people argue that obese people should decide whether or not they want to be healthy.In sum, then, the issue is whether society and the government should do something about obesity. My own view is that while I do think that the government and society should encourage healthy living, however, there should be less pressure from society.

In public health, as in many fields there are a set of conundrums that practitioners, leaders and law makers have to address in order to provide the most appropriate service to their populations. One of these conundrums is the battle between what is good for the community vs. what is good for the individual. This topic will be broken up to the community vs. the individual, and discussed based on research done by Kass et al, and Oriola, and will be concluded by presenting possible solutions.