Importance of Health Policy in Improving Indigenous Health
Write a Report on Aboriginal Health.
Health policy refers to decisions taken to attain specific health care goals within a society as stated in the plan (Ricciardi et al., 2013). As per the World Health Organizations (WHO), a health policy sets its goals, visions and defines essential matters and the responsibilities of different characters in theory as stated in (World Health Organization, World Health Organization Management of Substance Abuse Unit 2014). The policy formulators then bring people together to achieve the same goal by providing them with appropriate information. The Aboriginal persons contribute to 4% of Western Australia population (Marmot et al., 2012). They have the highest health needs than any other group on the continent. The domestic health policy gives strategic approach and guidelines for the implementation of the system aiming at improving lives of the Aboriginal people in Australia. Indigenous health includes the social, emotional, physical and cultural well-being of every person involved in the system. The Aboriginal people in Australia have poor health lifestyle this being a contribution of several factors such as poor education, improper housing, social factors, environment, and discrimination.
In analyzing the health status of the Aboriginal people, the National Aboriginal Health Strategy (NAHSAP 1998) recommended effective and better health services for this people. Priority has been given to the implementation and advancement of health services for the Aboriginal people. Other bodies in implementing the healthy policy such as National Aboriginal and Community Controlled Health Organizations (NACCHO) advocates for the holistic approach to achieving the health policy. The organization seeks to find a friendly approach that can improve the health status of the Aboriginal people. The health system is the inclusion of public health policy and health care policy (Zimlichman et al., 2013)). It focuses on health services in an organized state for caring of illness.
Health policy analysis aims at giving explanations between other related factors and its effects. Many policy analysts have studied the policy over time with aims of reformation (Wildavsky, 2017). It is an interdisciplinary method to public policy targeting to analyze the relationships it has with other institutions and the policy approaches. In the case of Aboriginal, the concept investigated to explain the health policy is the holistic health care. This method describes how the strategy works in providing and supporting the health services.
The Holistic health care services involve the total care of a patient including emotions, social level, economic level, physical and even spiritual needs of a person on how she or he responds to illness on the effort to take self-care needs (Papathanasiou et al., 2013). Individuals who suffer from intellectual and developmental disabilities suffer from healthcare comorbidities thus they require care from all angles of health services, support, and reliance on natural assistance for their emotional, physical and social needs. This can be achieved through many approaches via education, medication, communication, treatments and individual support (Bullington & Fagerberg, 2013). ). Holistic care involves profoundly understanding the needs of the sick people. First, it ensures that they are provided with sufficient education to help them undertake individual attention on their bodies through self-reliance. It makes patient to be confident and aware of their illness making it easy for nurses to understand the causes of their disease. It also enhances harmony that exists between the body, mind and emotional environment of an individual. The America Association of Holistic Nurses agrees with the practice and points that it aids the recovery of a person to completeness.
Holistic Care: Providing Total Care
In most healthcare service providing centers nurses lack full freedom in performing their duties as most of them are taken by doctors (Maslach et al., 2013). Through the establishment of Holistic care, they can complete the process of healing and give them an independent view of their responsibilities. Holistic care means caring for patients, and this is derived initially from Florence Nightingale who came up with the system during World War I.
The current healthcare systems of nursing lack the in-depth knowledge and understanding of holistic care (Trail-Mahan et al., 2013). This is because most of them are equipped with biomedical skills which imply a lack of familiarity with another care system available for nursing. Therefore, difficult to address all the needs of a patient from all angles, and this can lead to ignoring severe problems in a sick person as they are only considered to be biological structures neglecting emotional, spiritual and their social demands. The application of medicines alone exposes the patient to a higher risk of death, taking longer to heal and also the cost of treatments increases.
The Health policy is significant on the Aboriginal people as it improves the understanding of the health needs of the marginalized groups like Aboriginal. Helping the disadvantaged in the society is always the right thing to do as health service provider. The reasons for choosing the health policy is for its significance since it contributes to the transformation of health lifestyle of the Aboriginals in general and also improves the services provided (Browne et al., 2014).
The Aboriginals experience the poor, healthy lifestyle and less educational, social, economic and political contentment as compared to the non-indigenous people in Australia. The system aims at improving the health status of given population over time.
The comparison that exists between health and economic growth varies among societies. Health is one of the main factors to human capital. The practical health policy will result in better individual health among the Aboriginals (Henderson, 2012). A healthy individual is energetic enhancing productivity. Most recent research reveals that health affects the economy in many ways. Improving health care or policies adds value to the labor productivity. For example in the Aboriginals, the full implementation of health policy like holistic care increases life expectancy through eliminating of chronic diseases such as kidney failure, therefore, improving the human capital productivity which enhances the growth of the economy (Blank et al., 2017). Fighting diseases among the Aboriginals means many survivals and leads to healthy lives which are the primary sources of production leading to better nutrition.
Relationship between Health Policy and Economic Growth
An improved health policy also affects the economic development through increasing the duration of the human capital labor pool. The decreased mortality rates depict this, a fundamental factor in human labor to consider before any investment. This encourages investments and economic growth. Here reduced mortality rate means more and better services will grow within the economy thus improving the gross domestic product (GDP) (Blank, 2017). Healthy policies such as holistic care ensure that there is reduced illness among the Aboriginal. Individuals with inadequate health cannot offer services that can add value to the economy. Diseases have a negative impact on the economic progress by affecting the productivity as well as the education level. Improved health policy lead to increase in population growth which affects the per capita income (Moreno-Serra & Smith, 2012).
Aboriginal forms minority group in Australia. Their total population has no impact on political influence in the region. An improved healthy policy ensures better medical care for the Aboriginals (McCallum & Waller, 2013). This will contribute to the reduction in mortality rate, therefore, enhancing long life expectancy. In the long run, it will lead to increase in the population of the Aboriginal (Liverani et al., 2013). The increase of these population will shift the political motivation and influence to the marginalized community thus gaining political power and control.
Health policy should be pollution free (Ford, 2012). If implemented it should not have any harm to the environment that will, in turn, lead to ill health to the humans. The methods that are used in the treatment of humans are to be active to attain set goals and objectives. Some drug substances cause harm to the body if not well handled. The storage of health drugs and dosage should be environmentally friendly. In this case, holistic healthcare will go a long way in adhering to environmental friendly therapies.
The legal framework of health policy should not violate the right of any individual. Everybody has a right to access proper health services at affordable rates (Marmot, 2012). Health service providers should be accountable for the health services as per the health policy. Only qualified and certified medicals professionals are supposed to carry out health services. Public and private health facilities like hospitals, dispensaries, and clinics are supposed to be licensed to carry out their operations.
Some strategies to attain the set goals and objectives of Aboriginal healthy, the health policy advocates for holistic care as a method to fight poor health in the Aboriginals by providing sufficient information to the community (Australian health minister conference, 2015).Its efficiency and effectiveness measure health policy. Effectiveness focuses on improving the health of individual or population meaning it encourages the treatment methods which functions and discourages those methods that only waste resources. Efficiency gives solutions to the issues of input and output ratios (Buse, 2012). The society as limited resources and this implies that spending on one subject means reducing the ability to spend in the other sectors. Health policy fully maximizes the health of the [population to conserve resources for the rest of the remaining divisions in the community. The main areas of efficiency focus are disease prevention and promoting health services. These results to cost benefit and cost effectiveness when analyzing the health policy. Vaccination is a good example where strategy focuses on prevention than curing as a cost-effective method. For instance, if a disease is chronic and rare the impact of eliminating the diseases are not dangerous when giving vaccination to the whole population something perceived to be costly for the society than when providing medical attention to the few individuals who are suffering from the given disease. The prevention through vaccination is less expensive and saves resources and time for eliminating the disease.
Pollution-Free Methods and Legal Framework in Health Policy
Aims and Objectives of Health Policy
The system aims to ensure increase health services across all components of the community. The primary objective is to attain acceptable levels of health among all the population in the country. It also facilitates increased access to health services, improving health infrastructure and public health system in general (Buse, 2012).
The policy also demands that the health services are affordable to everyone in Australia including the Aboriginals. Discriminatory healthcare plans can create gaps for development of other health programs that aim at controlling diseases such as Tuberculosis, malaria, HIV/AIDS and immunization programs like polio and Ebola. The Indigenous healthcare policy fosters the provision of essential drugs to the marginalized people through the national government. The health policy oversees the implementation of these health programs. The health policy is aimed towards improving health lives of people and achieving global health cover as well as offering quality health care services to anyone at an affordable cost.
The policy analyses challenges and solutions of health care systems. With the emergence of chronic diseases over time in some regions of the globe, the policy defines preventive measures of health care thus addresses the security of health services and its availability when needed. Attaining the highest point in better health of people and their wellbeing is the primary target of the National Health Policy 2017. The health policy advice on free medical drugs, free diagnostic and free emergency care services to most hospitals to attain the objective.
The health policy also defines the role of government in the provision of health services and improvement of health systems and facilities. This means that the government ensures that health services are extensive, incorporated and accessible to everybody.
Health policy ensures that positive and aggressive involvement with private health sectors to fill the gaps that cannot be adequately be covered by the public sector enhancing one national goal. These can be through creating awareness, building reliable links with communities, development of skilled programs and management of disasters. This helps in bringing together public and private sectors.
Health policy contributes to the increase of public health budget by a certain percentage of the gross domestic product in a given financial period. The plan also checks on finding approaches to fighting diseases through reduction and giving assessment programs. This bounds the health systems and provides policies for medical tools. It assists with voluntary services in remote areas by recognition of health service providers who are after corporate social responsibility initiatives.
Resources
In implementing the health policy availability of resources is the fundamental factor to consider to effectively offering quality healthcare services. These resources are in the form of cash, improvised medical facilities that help to raise health service providers’ productivity. Lack of resources affects the quality of health work service in general. The policy should implement cost-effective approaches when dealing with health matters. For example, when a devastating illness affects given population preventive measures such as vaccination are preferred to be effective than curing the ailment of the individuals who are only suffering from it.
Timeframe
With the changing health world of advancement in technology and various regulations, health policy should be on a timeline that can capture all components of health in better health service care. Systems should be able to accommodate future changes. The administration should also be able to cover a given period effectively for example in a given duration of one year.
Priorities
Useful health policy advice on better medical attention first for emergency cases for nurses and consider the marginalized groups like the Aboriginals. The policy should consider health services to affected areas for prevention measures. It should advise on methods that will protect the population of a given demographic area, accessibility and availability of health services.
Conclusion and Recommendations
Health policy covers people from diverse backgrounds regardless of race, age or financial ability. It gives inclusion of different tasks to be completed and defines the devices and technologies in use. With effective health policy economy will grow because of the increase in population and all encourage immigration if the cost of health is cheap. Despite the simple, healthy analysis frameworks discuses above, health policy analysis still faces challenges in thorough implementations. The World Health organization sound policy finds conflict in support of national policies because of diversifications, interpretations, culture, religion and the political views (Miguel & Luquism, 2013). Most national policy reports are not referred to health policy during implementation, and this can affect health outcomes. Mostly policy statements lack paper support and their measure parameters. Most health policies in some countries fail to identify the real problem facing the natives and favorable solutions in a balanced system (Meara et al., 2015).
There is a need for health policy analysis in the surest health structures in the world we live. Advancement in technology and sciences has expanded knowledge concerning health issues. It as leads to increase in information and its availability in the analysis. Health policies need to be accurate because of its expansiveness and effectiveness. It also has ensured that the role of government in providing medical care is protected through the development of new medical care and giving accountability through Accountability Care Organization (ACOs) (Pham et al., 2014)
Most policymakers fail to explain the policy documents to all the stakeholders through formal approaches to creating awareness among health service providers. Health policy needs knowledge and professional skills from other subjects and methods. Raising only fundamental issues means focusing on selected factors ignoring others like implementing the strategy just to the indigenous people. Healthcare providers insist on quality of health care service despite its limitation to resources this thus affects management decision-making ability in some aspects of health systems.
Its performance in the implementation characterizes health policy. It faces challenges such us less time change which leads to a continuous revision of the system (Carinci, 2015). This is because of improvement in technology changes in government policies and regulations and climate change. Policymakers should consider making flexible health policy that can be adjustable in any turn of a situation like inflation and political instability. Also, all the stakeholders should be involved in the policy-making and implementation to enhance effective healthcare as well as consider availing the services to the marginalized homes.
Effective health policy should be equitable (Hung et al., 2011). It must not discriminate any individual when delivering health care. This refers to promoting fairness in the system of health considering gender, race, and ethical background, and income level, level of education and even geographical position of an individual. Elimination of unfair treatment in the health sector is the reason for policy implementation.
References
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