The Impact of Social, Environmental, and Behavioral Factors on the Health of Different Populations
Discuss about the Community Health and Disease Prevention.
Community Health and Disease Prevention is a department that covers the role of assessing, promoting and preventing the illness. This helps in improving the health conditions of the country. They address all the activities like physical activities, health care and transmission of disease. In this report the focus is thrown on the dengue fever. Thus the impact of social, environmental and behavioural factors on the health of different populations is discussed. Health inequalities is also increasing with time thus the major social, economic, political and cultural forces that contribute to health inequalities are listed. The first part of the report covers the health concern for dengue fever along with the key strategies that are used to engage community to implement a program (Trinh, Nadkarni, Park, Islam & Kwon, 2015). The use of capacity building domain also discussed. The last part of the report describes the theories that could be used for health promotion.
There are various factors due to which health of a population is affected. The social factors include the class, culture and socioeconomic background. The social economic factor indicates poor diet or unhealthy lifestyle. Apart from that change in the ecological zones led to increases of microbes (Oxford university press, 2017). The reason of social determinates include social norms, lack of resources like educational and health care facilities. Social economic conditions like poverty increase disease as there is no medical treatment available. The impact of these factors reflects the health status of an individual. The reason behind poor health condition can be lack of education, poor working environment, unemployment and unavailability of health care services (Oxford university press, 2017). The health of different population is all dependent on these factors. Social factors of health reflect the social physical situations and the location in which an individual live. Thus, these factors impact the health, functioning, and outcomes of life for different age group.
The main reason behind health inequalities is in the way an individual treat their health and illness. It is the behaviour of an individual that influences the health. Health inequalities are the differences that are faced by people of different age group. It can be due to socioeconomic status, disability, gender, unemployment or immigration. The social, economic, political and cultural factors cause inequality because of the conditions in which they live (Owen, Salmon, Koohsari, Turrell & Giles, 2014). It can be stated that health inequalities are due to the health status and the resources that are made available to people of different age group. Thus health inequalities can be removed by focusing on the most disadvantaged groups. This approach can be used to improve the health and could remove the inequalities between rich and poor. Additionally, it is important to narrow the health gaps between the poorest and the richest (Eldredge, Markham, Ruiter, Kok & Parcel, 2016)
Major Social, Economic, Political, and Cultural Forces that Contribute to Health Inequalities
. To remove the inequalities the social gradient need to be reduced so that differences and equalising is maintained. The inequalities in health can be due to poverty, education and poor health. Inequalities are basically injustice that needs to be avoided.
It is a preventable disease but there is no vaccine available for dengue fever. It can be prevented by avoiding going in those areas where there are chances of mosquitoes. Using Lavarack’s ladder of community-based interaction it can be stated that this disease arise due to climatic change as well as spreading mosquito borne disease. He stated that emergence of dengue fever arises due uncontrolled urbanization and increasing population growth. The Lavarack’s ladder community based interaction uses both qualitative and quantitative method. It is a framework that provides readiness, participation, engagement, development, organisation, collective action and community empowerment (Owen, Salmon, Koohsari, Turrell & Giles, 2014). The strategy prepares the community by implementing the programs so that audience become aware. People become actively involved by sharing their views and ideas to identify the concern. The problems are identified and then collaborative process is designed to make use of all the resources and influence system. Community organisation is used as a structure to share goals and helps in making shared decisions. The ladder of community based interaction provides interpretation of all the complicated things where it is a disease (Bowling, 2014). It does not represent a linear progression but builds set of concepts s that community based issues are resolved.
There are various strategies that are used to engage the community to implementation a policy or a program. There is variety of ways that could be used to engage the stakeholders so that program could be implemented (Bowling, 2014). In case of prevention of dengue fever the reason and issue is spread among the entire individual so that they become aware and precautions could be taken. The spectrum of community engagement is categorized into three levels.
- Inform- In this all the actions that are necessary for prevention are designed. It is useful as it is necessary to ensure the community that is affected by the disease. This works on informing all the people so that they become aware about the situations.
- Consult- This is a key step in which the situation is compared and feedback is provided to make final decisions.
- Active Involvement- Community based interaction can be seen as an active participation in all the issues to develop fast solution.
Other strategy that could be used to gather community attention can be social media marketing as it captures more audience in single time.
The core domains are used for capacity building; it was identified by Liberato in 2011. The main motive was to support the journey to community empowerment and ownership. The health concern currently is dengue fever. Liberato stated that capacity building is a kind of local promotion use to achieve high degree of community support. This concept came in the market due to fact of building community, training professionals and helps in strengthening the awareness regarding the disease in the target population. The community capacity building is beneficial in case of empowerment people about dengue fever (Wilder, Vannice, Hombach, Farrar & Nolan, 2016). It helps the people to analyses activities that need to be undertaken to prevent dengue fever. They perform health promotion problems so that health behavioural terms are analysed and risk conditions are raised. Various prevention programs like IIS that is integrated intervention strategy for the journey to dengue fever is empowered to prevent program. It is strategy to prevent from dengue fever as by control treatment. It pays more attention towards social mobilization an empowerment. IIS was successful in removing the dengue prevention by analysing the case of every individual and then designing programs accordingly (Wilder, Vannice, Hombach, Farrar & Nolan, 2016). The way to prevent the sever cause of disease requires educator. Educator spreads the programs designed by government and promises to reduce the transmission of dengue risk. The community can be made aware about the disease by first providing primary education. Social mobilization also helps in preventing dengue fever (Bowden, 2016). One of the prevention way is removing poverty and deficiency of all the public services that are necessary. As from the research it can be stated that dengue transmission occurs in the country due to lack of social service. The core domain of capacity based community can be used to design dengue elementary programs by using ecosystem approach. Apart from that dengue can be prevented by school education program that covers providing knowledge to students in classes regarding all the symptoms and reasons how this can be caused (Davis, Campbell, Hildon, Hobbs & Michie,2015). The strategy was focused on removing all waste and cleaning all the containers and materials that are not used. The reason behind misquotes in the society is waste material thus all the discards and used material are cleared (Shanahan, Fuller, Bush, Lin & Gaston, 2015). Thus it can be stated that participation of community members is important to control and prevent dengue. Various dengue prevention and control methods are incorporated by government authorities to improve the efficacy and impact of disease on the people (Kaholokula, Ing, Look, Delafield & Sinclair, 2018).
Preventable Health Concern for Dengue Fever
There are various models that approach that are used for health promotion. Health promotion is important as it enables the control over the disease and improves the overall health of the country (Shanahan, Fuller, Bush, Lin & Gaston, 2015). It works on determinates that are faced by people and promotes the control measure. Some of the models are defined below.
The health belief model- It is a health belief model that tries to explain all the health behaviours and predict the future concerns. This model is helpful in analysing all the short term and long term health behaviours so that risk could be minimized (Parsons, 2014).
Advantage- it works on perceived belief that no one will face dengue. The health belief model could be used for any kind of disease.
Disadvantage- The limitation of this model is it does not take care of person’s attitude and belief. It does not take care of environmental and economic factors.
The education approach- This approach promotes all the techniques and skills that could be incorporated to avoid the chances of dengue (Havranek, et. al, 2015).
Advantage- It makes the people aware among all the target audience. They gain knowledge about all the precautions and issues that could be undertaken.
Disadvantage- It can be a complex way as it restricts all the social and economic factors (Havranek, et. al, 2015). It also reflects that due to knowledge change behavioural changes also reflects.
Collective action model- This is a health model that consider all the socio-ecological issues. It studies the interrelationship with the individual and the environmental conditions (Tki, 2017). It uses all the social actions so that health promotion could be fast.
Advantage- It follows the teaching process and takes all the health determinants into consideration (Tki, 2017). It words on the principal that everyone take the participation.
Medical Approach- The aim of this approach is to reduce mortality and morbidity of the disease. They first target the group of people who are at higher risk.
Advantage- It encourages medical knowledge and compliance with treatments, so that patient gains the medical knowledge as well.
Disadvantage- The limitation is that it focuses on the absence of disease rather than on promoting positive health.
Conclusion
Community Health and Disease Prevention is important part to maintain a healthy community. In this report the disease that was considered was dengue fever that is a preventable illness but requires proper prevention. The impact of factors like social, economic, political and cultural forces is discussed. These factors affect the people of different age group. The preventable measures of dengue fever are described. Three strategies that are used to involve the community are discussed along with the programs that are implanted to prevent the illness. Capacity building is a core domain that promotes to achieve the empowerment and ownership in the community. Heath promotion is an important part in preventing the illness to spread and it also creates awareness among people. Various models that could be used for promotion are listed above. Some of the models that were discussed are the health belief model, education approach, collective action model and medical approach. Each model has their advantage and limitations that could be used according to the use. The health prevention is important and various steps need to be undertaken to remove the health inequalities among people.
References
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