The Role of a Public Health Officer
Public health is the science or channel of protecting the safety and improving the health of communities or society through education, research for disease, policy making and injury prevention. A public health system thus comprises of public, private and voluntary organisations all with the aim of delivering necessary health services in a place (Burris, Ashe, Levin, Penn & Larkin, 2016). Thus a public health officer is a person who has been charged with the responsibility of supervising health related issues in a place. As seen in the scenario, Helen has been nominated to be a public health officer after being a general practitioner for five years. As a general practitioner she focused on primary care of individuals but as a public health officer her duties will change, expand and diversify. Carlson, Chilton, Corso and Beitsch (2015) in defining the roles of a public health officer, conducted a literature review as well as consulting practitioners in which they identified six functions of a public health officer. These included, developing policies, good governance of resources, ensuring there is continuous improvement in the health sector, engaging with partners, being the legal authority and providing an oversight in the health department. These are the roles that are going to be taken up by Helen when she becomes a public health officer.
As a public health officer she has been mandated to ensure promotion of healthy communities and focusing on the health of population rather than primary care of individuals which she was previously doing (Oster & Braaten, 2016). This is going to include ensuring there is proper sanitation, housing, controlling infection control through education and taking relevant precautions and initiating and improving immunization programs. The public will therefore have to be taught on how to improve high standards of sanitation by ensuring or observing cleanliness at all times. Housing and ensuring that the public are having good housing facilities is also part of the public health office responsibilities. The office is also mandated with educating the public so as to control and prevent and control infection. Initiating and improving immunization initiatives are also part of the top priorities of the public health office. Before she even starts working on his current post, she has some achievements being that she is popular in the region and has experience in some fields such as immunization which got her accoladed while working as general practitioner. Since Helen is already a leader the question then becomes if she is going to improve herself and her leadership skills. Lachance & Oxendine, (2015) discuss that graduates will need leadership skills in the field and with changing environment, Helen could really use some leadership skills. According to the setting of the scenario it would be better to understand how to apply the skills being that she is a lady, she is young and the society is not open for young female leaders. Richter et al., (2016) on transformational leadership intervention, describe leadership as a theory and that makes it difficult to draw conclusions on what leaders should do and at what circumstances. Communication in public health goes a long way to improve healthcare for example in a scenario of an emergency (Khan et al., 2017). Since she has no previous experience of working with a lot of stakeholders as she is just going to start so communication and overcoming her inhabitation of not being used to people would be really helpful.
Challenges of a Public Health Officer
The community or society in which Helen is working in has broader needs. For instance there is need to empower them to take control of their environment and take care of it ensuring its clean and does not put them to danger (Pantoja et al., 2017). It’s also necessary to involve them in policy making as this would make them understand and follow the policies that they have passed rather than presenting ready-made policies. In a society where the everyone is involved in making laws or even policies its easier for them to be followed since they know what the policies are how important they are and since they were involved in making it they would definitely follow them. Mwisongo, Nabyonga-Orem, Yao and Dovlo (2016) in their article on the power in health policy dialogues argue that policies in the health sector have only been very successful or efficient where the public were involved. This is because power is applied positively to focus or prioritise on the needs of the people and foster development thus the public will gladly follow the policies. The community knows where they have a problem and what policy is going to help them and how the policy should be applied or implemented. The community also has problems such as it lacks specialist services. This alone has caused a lot of deaths because the distance covered to go and get specialist care is so long. O’Sullivan, McGrail, & Stoelwinder, (2017) did a research rather a cross-section study to why specialist doctors in Australia travel to provide regular rural outreach services. They concluded that there was a range of reasons but mainly to complement growth and diversity while also maintaining regional connection. A distance of 300 kilometres as experienced in the scenario is considerably long and it would be better if they were to get a specialist of their own nearer. The community has lost lives due to this and this matter should be looked into as a matter of urgency. There is also the issue of architects and town planners being the main bodies or force for the push of the agenda for public initiatives. They may not know crucial needs or in the process they could lose it since they don’t have a good understanding of what they are doing. For example during an emergency or where quick action is required or needed. Thus it should be the responsibility of the public health office to initiate and push for agendas and even initiatives (McPherson, Ndumbe-Eyoh, Betker, Oickle & Peroff-Johnston, 2016).
Helen is going to experience a number of challenges as in any setup in a move to initiate new moves or changes. There are challenges that arise from the system towards and some from her or personal qualities in the move to try and fit in that society. Problems arising from the society may include: the fact that the community is close-knit. This will be a challenge because it would be difficult to change the mind or thinking of the people since they share common beliefs and traditions. According to Ross, Elizabeth, Anjali, Kathleen (2017), some communities hold their culture too firmly that it’s a taboo to change. Others believe that something very bad will happen to them if they anger their ancestors by abandoning their culture. This community where she will be working on also has an issue with young female leaders. So to the fact that she is popular, it doesn’t mean there won’t be some resentment from the community especially from members who consider themselves custodians of the culture. Other problems may come from her personal qualities. As in the scenario Helen is an introvert and this would make it difficult to involve even the stakeholders. It is obvious that there will be rejection and opposition of a particular magnitude so it’s upon her to work on the fact that she’s an introvert and gather courage to face the challenges (Gould & Rudolph, 2015).
Community Involvement in Policy Making
The general requirements of her new role would be dependent on her understanding of the environment in which she will be operating in. In this case, Helen understands the community to be close-knit which means it’s bound together and also is having strong common cultural interests. Allen, Mohatt, Beehler and Rowe (2014) explain that getting through to people who are close knit would require you to identify as one of them. This would thus help them to trust you as one of their own rather than an outside ruler. She also understands the society she’s in to be diverse, multi-ethnic and ageing. It is also a society whereby the public health initiatives have not always been driven by the public health office but architects and town planners. She should understand that she’s not going to continue with initiatives but start anew as there has been none especially from the public health office. Being that she’s an introvert she will definitely need to work on that to be able to engage with the relevant stake holders. There are qualities that Helen has that are going to be necessary in working with the colleagues, stakeholders and the community. She is kind which will help her to connect with the patients or even the colleagues; she is optimistic so hopefully she won’t give up when things get hard or tough and finally she is a qualified medical practitioner so she knows what is she is doing. This will boost her courage and with the five years’ experience she probably has experiences the challenges she is about to go through and definitely how to go about with them.
Jambroes, van Honschooten, Doosje, Stronks and Essink-Bot (2015) explain that public health, its planning and workforce require adequate data and experience on the services provided. So the experience that Helen has goes a long way to help not only her but also the people she is working with. Being appointed the public health officer means she will be in charge of the public health office and all the employees that are there. She also will be in charge or supervising the initiatives of the public health office. She will be managing funds that have been brought in either for development or projects of that office. She will be guiding the community to initiate programs like advocating for equitable access to services, health promotion, environmental health issues, disease prevention, finding sustainable food sources (Community gardens), accessible exercise (running tracks). She will lead everyone including those who feel she is not worthy to hold that position. To the stakeholders, since they believed in her as a General Practitioner but are now in doubt, she will have to convince them she’s capable to lead them and hold that position.
In exploring the Australian Health Leadership Framework with the scenario, this was a national dialogue in Australia in the year 2011. The health workforce in Australia decided to take this journey towards agreeing a national leadership framework that will be a basis of developing leadership capabilities. Graham and Tholl (2014) speak about means by which leadership can be brought back to life. Otherwise without this leadership would remain a theory that no one understands and this won’t be effective. Leadership of the public health office and the local administration should work together and help each other in the mobilisation either in communication from top to the people or and also from the people to the administration or authority in place.
Leadership Skills
In conclusion, Helen is already a leader and all she has to do is continue working on her leadership skills and improve them. She will be constantly involved with people and disagreements are bound to occur. She needs to practice good communication with everyone since it’s the only tool that she can use in running that office (Yan-Shing, Kirstie, Anayda & Debra, 2018). There are going to be challenges but she needs to brace herself because she is capable of doing this. She has experience though not so much and has achieved much in her previous field of practice. It’s because of these achievements that she was accoladed this new opportunity. Helen also needs to double her efforts because this new post involves more than the previous where she was a general practitioner. . Basically the greatest requirement would be to understand herself and the society she’s operating in. She can focus on her strengths one being that she is popular she could use this to her advantage and make things easier. Finally it’s in order that she’s opportunistic as this will keep her going and deliver the mandate and what is required of her despite any challenges she may come across.
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