Preventive Care Essay

Preventive health care involves a wide range of interventions which help for maintaining good health habits, reducing the incidence of disease and disability, and slowing the progress of illnesses. These interventions can include providing childhood immunizations, raising taxes on cigarettes,

As of 2008, there are approximately 73.9 million children living in the United States. Of these children more that 5.5 million have some form of mental or physical disability. In addition, 77 percent of uninsured children come from low-income families (CoverTheUninsured.org, 2008). However, Missouri’s population of uninsured children fares much better at almost half the national average or 7.2 percent (Missouri Foundation for Health, 2004). More than 8 million children in America are uninsured. That means 1 out of every 10 does not have any form of health coverage. Racial and ethnic disparities among those uninsured children are dramatic. Most recent data has found that one in 13 White children is uninsured compared to: one in five American Indian children, one in six Latino children, one in nine African American children, one in nine Asian/Pacific Islander children. (Children’s Defense Fund, 2010)

Childhood immunizations are extremely important to promote with expectant parents because it’s their vital decision to get their child vaccinated or not. Expectant parents need to be educated by health care workers about immunizations in order to completely understand how important they are for their newborn child’s health. Immunization accounts for

Throughout history people have seen many public health innovations. Numerous advancements were made between 2001 and 2010. These advancements include “tobacco control, motor vehicle safety, public health preparedness and response, and occupational safety.” (Ten Great Public Health Achievements --- United States, 2001—2010) One of the most important innovations was vaccine preventable diseases. Many people believe that it is right for the government to necessitate children to be vaccinated. Others think it is wrong and that the parents should decide what is best for their children’s health. It is beneficial for the United States government to require young children in the United States to get vaccinations including hepatitis A and B,

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a radical healthcare reform that aims to provide affordable, quality healthcare for all US citizens. This increased scope of coverage would allow millions more of Americans to use the system. In order to drive down costs from many more individuals, the ACA has planned to increase incentives for preventative public health interventions including primary care physicians. Although this is a fine beginning, I believe the greatest challenge to the long-term success of this reform remains the shift in mindset from a focus in treatment to an equal focus in prevention. Preventative services are vital to a healthcare system. However, the effects of prevention are often long term, and thus are traditionally underappreciated by those who have the disease being prevented. Individuals with the disease also undervalue prevention, as it does not affect their health state. With this mindset, prevention is undermined and will continue to be a challenge for the progression of the ACA.

Vaccinations are safe and they work. There are many parents who choose for their own reasons to ignore Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations to vaccinate and exercise their right to not do so. They run the risk of having their child suffer or even possibly die when they opt-out to having their child vaccinated. Today in the United States, outbreaks of vaccine-preventable disease are often traced to susceptible children whose parents have claimed an exemption from school or child care immunization regulations (CDC, 2014).

The health of the American people lags behind those from other developed countries. Federal public health agencies have a wide range of responsibilities and functions which includes public health research, funding, and oversight of direct healthcare providers. It has been a long time since changes have been made to the way the federal government structures its health care roles and programs outside of Medicare and Medicaid (Trust, 2013). With healthcare reform on the horizon now is the time to invest time and money in prevention, not medicine, making it a top priority to improve health and prevent disease. Funding efforts at all levels of the public health continuum need to focus on developing programs aimed at such leading initiatives

For example an x-ray machine could be leased and the organization would a fee depending on how many x-rays they take per month or year.

The increases of children that don’t receive any medical attention are prone to more cases of illness in United States. The more the child is at risk, the less the child is able to attend school with normal children. There are also over 40 million Americans a year that do not get medical care when it is needed, even if they are insured (Sweeney). More than 8 out of 10 uninsured Americans are from average working families (Sweeney). If an injury or sickness occurs, Americans that do not receive proper health care pray for the best because they cannot afford it. In most cases, lacking proper health care leads to thousands of deaths every year (Sweeney). Today, there are five major problems in the current health care systems. Those problems include: Accessibility, Cost/Affordability, Lack of portability, technologically deficient, and Lack of data availability (Sweeney). These problems have not been solved yet because of lack of central planning of the healthcare system.

The United States (US) health care system is changing dramatically. The Affordable Care Act is a catalyst that is spurring change by the promotion of two drivers: access and primary preventative care. Before the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010, over 47 million Americans were uninsured thus denying them access to basic health care (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services [HHS], 2012). Increasing access and increasing the availability of primary care services (pre-natal care, preventative care, primary disease prevention, and secondary disease

“Monitoring and improving health in children” contributed to the decrease in childhood mortality and morbidity (Singh, 1996 ). The decline in mortality and morbidity in children one through four in the 1950s through the 1980s was due to many factors. “Immunization and vaccine preventable disease” and community health programs had a reduced effect on mortality and morbidity rates (Ahmad, Lopez, & Inoue, 2000). Children were required to have immunization shots before attending school. This is to keep down the spread of communicable diseases. Also, federal programs, such as Medicaid helped children that were poor (Centers for Disease Control

Conditions such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes account for 75% of health care spending in the United States and (cdc.gov). However, many of these chronic conditions are preventable with proper preventative screenings and care. The passage of the Affordable Care and the expansion of Medicaid increased the number of preventative care services available to Medicaid beneficiaries, however there are still many barriers preventing people from getting proper care. This policy paper analyzes possible options to improve access to preventative health services and then provides recommendations. This policy brief is targeted towards the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid who administer the Medicaid program as well as state agencies that regulate the Medicaid program in each state. The CMS has the power to help prevent diseases in a large population of people and this brief will argue why it is their responsibility to do so. The purpose of this brief is that Medicaid administrators will realize the gaps in coverage and implement reforms to help some of the most high risk people in the United States.

This paper examines the controversy surrounding the public health issue of vaccinations in children. Following a careful review of the literature surrounding this issue, the possible reasons for and implications of having a large percentage of the population who remains unvaccinated are discussed. Possible interventions and purposed interventions for resolution of this problem are discussed and conclusions are drawn based on what it learned from the literature.

Children in the United States are also suffering because of the lack of universal health care coverage. While there is coverage for children living at or below the poverty level, there is no coverage available for those children whose parents make too much money to qualify for the low-income programs and too little money to be able to afford health insurance. “These gaps in health insurance coverage may lead to delayed or unmet health care needs among children” (Kim & Viner-Brown, 2007). As a result, these children are less likely to be taken to the doctor for treatment of chronic illnesses like “asthma” or “recurrent ear infections” (Hoffman & Paradise, 2008). It boggles the mind to know that “uninsured newborns, even though they had more severe

Public health is a dynamic field of medicine that is concerned primarily with improving the health of populations rather than just the health of individuals. Winslow (1920) defined public health as;