The world has witnessed many pandemics and diseases that have escalated the impermanence of human life. Many of these pandemics were fatal and left people aghast as they prevailed across countries. Such times have undoubtedly been troublesome for people all around the world. However, whenever a population has had to face such menaces, they have been able to overcome it with the help of their health sector. Public health has always been the frontline defender against viruses and diseases that threaten our health and lives, alongside the healthcare sector.
What is Public Health?
You hear about various kinds of outbreaks and pandemics pervading across countries. There are some in-home battles with certain endemics and morbidities as well. Public health is responsible for tracking these outbreaks and taking preventive measures to curb their spread. It also aims to educate the public regarding health precautions and disease prevention and provide better and equal health services to people from all walks of life.
A career in Public Health
It is undoubtedly one of the noblest professions, and the people who follow it are undeniably extraordinary. It is a salient job that comes with great responsibility and requires excellence to earn it. You can only achieve such excellence if you enter the public health profession.
With the rising demand and growing importance of public health, many universities have introduced online masters of public health degree programs. These courses are designed to provide comprehensive studies on the various aspects of public health and offer students a wide range of educational options while they pursue their master’s degree. Students can choose from different online courses such as epidemiology, public health administration, environmental health, biostatistics, health law, and many more.
The virtual availability of gaining excellence in the field allows students to learn at their own pace and convenience while still receiving quality education from a reputable institution. Has all that made you curious about public health’s role in preventing health inequities? The following information might be just the insight you need.
Public Health’s Role in Preventing Health Inequities
The Analysis of the Health Inequities
The first action taken by the health public is to analyze the inequities faced by the affected population based on four facts. These factors include the geographical location of the affected population, the socio-economic aspect, social status, and certain characteristics that give people the right to be protected under the law, such as their ethnicity, sex, or disability. Many of the same groups can be victims of multiple of these inequities. Public health identifies the causes to instigate a preventive program.
Preventive Measures
When they identify the health inequities in a group of people, the primary preventive measures the public health takes are to halt its progression through intervention. They give education on various hygiene practices to the people who are relevant to the recorded inequities and those they perceive as potential future threats.
An example of these preventive measures is the Health Education Campaign in the UK and the promotion of vaccine shots for different age groups. Another example of this is the campaigns held for providing people with the guidelines to promote healthy eating and educate them regarding the harms of unhealthy eating to encourage people to make positive life changes for an improved quality of life.
Prevention’s secondary lines of action are more physical interventions than verbal ones. These include the screening programs organized for specific populations for early detection of diseases that they are susceptible to and the maternal and child programs arranged for the prevention of fetal abnormalities and to eliminate risk factors.
These programs allow the public to receive essential information regarding the risks they are subjected to and the preventive measures they can follow to avoid becoming victims. Most health inequities are preventable and directly associated with an individual’s locality and socio-economic aspects.
Policy Development
Public health uses all the facts they get through research to understand the root cause of the problem and its specifications. This is imperative for the foundation of a clear idea for developing a policy in the later stages. They consider objective quantifiable on four levels: an organization, society, network, and individual. It is required that these factors must be practical, measurable, and of a fixed term for them to be acceptable.
After successfully producing a clear report regarding the inequities, public health has to think of viable policy and non-policy solutions to the problem. They have to evaluate the cost and necessity of the presented solutions, decide which solution to apply, and determine the expected outcomes.
Once the data and reports are in order, public health presents its solutions to the higher authorities to bring them on board. After receiving their approval, the policy development arrives at the final stages to be administered to the public to improve their existing conditions.
An example of such policies would be fluoridating the water supply that reaches the public to improve and maintain oral health. Another policy is the mandatory printing of cancer warnings on cigarette packs to discourage tobacco use and the laws against selling cigarette packs to children under 18.
Enforcement of Laws and Policies
Public health enforces the new policies and the ones that are already in effect, along with the laws governing environmental health. To achieve this goal, public health introduces environmental health services to people per their health requirements. Especially in rural areas where there are no adequate medical facilities or health education to protect themselves and their children from endemics and other health threats, they ensure that these services are available to them, even when some are otherwise unattainable.
In order to fulfill this responsibility, the workforce affiliated with this sector must maintain efficiency and competency. Public health strives to keep its workforce in discipline and of high merits.
Take Away
Public health plays a very important role in defending the population against various environmental health threats. They monitor the health status of various groups to prevent unwanted outbreaks and form a strategic approach against existing health concerns. The profession is not only honorable but is, in fact, one that humanity cannot survive without.