Objectives of the State Public Health Plan
The primary aim of the paper is to discuss the health plan report of “State Public Health Plan” for Western Australia that aims to guide the State and the local governments to work together and contribute to influencing the health as well as the well-being of Western Australians. The assignment will be providing an overview of the plan where the health plan has three primary objectives- Objective 1- Empower and enable people to live healthy lives. Objective 2- Provide health protection for the community. Objective 3 – Improve Aboriginal health and wellbeing (Public Health Plan 2019). The assignment will go on to focus on the first objective which is also the policy priority area pertaining to the population group of rural and remote areas along with three determinants of health- social, biological, and environmental. These determinants of health will then be critically analysed pertaining to the policy priority area and priority population in Western Australia.
The health plan of “State Public Health Plan” for Western Australia aims to guide the State and the local governments to work together and contribute to influencing the health as well as the well-being of Western Australians (Public Health Plan 2019). The health plan aims to target the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population along with the population living in rural and remote areas of Western Australia (WA). The health plan has been developed by the Chief Health Officer of the WA department of health in partnership with the Mental Health Commission along with several public health experts of WA (Westphal et al 2019).
The health plan will be successful in improving the health of the specific Western Australians by compelling the government to come up with strong environmental health legislation where the stakeholders of the health plan will be initiating surveillance and programs of risk assessment that will help in identifying various types of disease outbreaks within the population and will be able to be treated on time that will help in reducing health risk among them and thereby lead to the promotion of effective health in Western Australia (Westphal et al 2019).
The focus of the health plan is to empower and enable people to live a healthy life by focusing on priority areas like healthy eating, reducing overweight and obesity, making smoking history, reducing the use of alcohol, drugs, and misuse of pharmaceuticals, optimizing mental health as well as well-being and preventing injuries which will thereby promote safer communities (Huse et al 2018).
The determinants of health that will be addressed by the health plan are environmental, biological, and social, where the health plan acknowledges that the determinants of health are clearly linked and associated with different types of health outcomes for the population which are at risk like the people of rural and remote areas (Huse et al 2018).
The Western Australian Health Plan has three primary objectives-
a) Empower and enable people to live healthy lives
b) Provide health protection for the community
c) Improve aboriginal health and wellbeing.
Empowering and Enabling Healthy Lives in Rural and Remote Areas
It should be noted that the assignment will focus on the first objective like which is to Empower and Enable people to live healthy lives. It is quite essential to empower as well as enable people to live healthy lives and is thereby chosen as a priority area (Valles 2018). Empowering and enabling people to live healthy lives will, therefore, help in addressing the health issues, will help in developing opportunities as well as capacities from which the chosen priority population, who are individuals living in remote and rural areas can derive benefit from them (Passey et al 2018).
Since, there is a lack of infrastructure, educational, and healthcare accessibility to people living in remote and rural areas of WA, therefore, by empowering them through education and communication will help in ensuring that they lead healthy lives and get treated on time (Avelino et al 2020). Empowering the target population will also help in mobilizing them so that they are successful in obtaining the required health resources by fostering awareness regarding a specific problem (Avelino et al 2020).
Therefore, to empower and enable healthy lives among the remote and rural population of WA, the stakeholders are trying to spread awareness regarding some essential aspects like drug abuse, obesity, and overweight, healthy eating, making smoking history and paying attention to the optimization of mental health as well as well-being and preventing injuries that will lead to better health outcomes within them (Rieckmann 2018).
The reason behind them, experiencing poor health and wellbeing outcomes is due to an unstable economy. The majority of the people in Western Australia, living in remote and rural areas suffer from the low-income issue, as a result of which they cannot afford to buy nutritious food that has resulted in their poor health and wellbeing (Lara, Crispín and Téllez 2018). The population also does not effectively practice physical exercises that have resulted in overweight and obesity.
Determinants of health are considered to be several factors that have a direct influence on the status of health of individuals as well as populations. There are different types of determinants of health like social, environmental, biological, economic, and others which have a direct impact on the health outcomes of every individual. Therefore, the three determinants of health that will be discussed in this section are social, biological, and environmental (Williams, Rhodes and Conner 2018).
All the above-mentioned determinants of health are closely linked to the policy priority area of empowering and enabling people to live healthy lives within the priority population of remote and rural communities located in Western Australia because the determinants have a tremendous impact on their health and well-being where the group is seen to have been experiencing poor health outcomes (Cosgrave, Malatzky and Gillespie 2019).
People living in rural and remote areas, tend to go through the issue of inappropriate housing, poor income which does not allow them to access health and educational services, suffer from poor transport infrastructure, go through lack of awareness regarding diseases due to weak technological infrastructure, genetic predisposition, drinking water contamination, exposure to hazardous materials, physical inactivity are some social, biological and environmental determinants of health that are closely linked to the poor health outcomes of the chosen population (Bennett et al 2019).
Determinants of Health in Rural and Remote Areas
At the same time, it should also be noted that due to the above reasons people are unable to access health, technological and educational services from where they can gain knowledge on different types of diseases along with their prevention and control measures as a result of which people living in the rural and remote areas are not being successfully empowered and enabled to live healthy lives that would have otherwise led to better health outcomes among them (Bennett et al 2019).
For instance, due to lack of access of social workers and government visits in these areas, the problem of contaminated drinking water, physical inactivity, and genetic predisposition cannot be identified by concerned authorities that would have encouraged and motivated them to enable and empower people to lead healthy lives by developing transport, technological, educational and health infrastructure in the area which would have resulted or might have contributed towards the development of the healthier community (Artiga, Orgera and Pham 2020).
One significant social determinant of heath prevalent among the rural and remote population of Western Australia is poor income or lack of economic stability which acts as a hindrance for them to effectively gain access to education and health services (Aghazadeh and Aldoory 2020). This will help them to derive information and understanding regarding different chronic and mental health illnesses like overweight and obesity, drug and alcohol consumptions along with its consequences that would have enabled and empowered them to lead healthy lives by diligently following the control and preventive measures (Chow et al 2018). However, this is not possible due to the poor income of the rural and remote population in Western Australia.
At the same time, one of the environmental determinants of health that is found to be quite prevalent among the remote and rural populations is the predominance of physical inactivity due to a lack of knowledge regarding the importance of physical as well as leisure activities (Townsend et al 2020). It is this environmental determinant of the health of physical inactivity that has led to the rise of cases of overweight and obesity within the population in Western Australia (Townsend et al 2020).
The biological determinant of health which will be discussed pertains to health that is affecting the rural and remote population of Western Australia and leading to their poor health outcomes (Skinner and Winterton 2018). The fertility rate within the remote and rural population in Western Australia has decreased, while life expectancy has increased which is resulting in the increase of the older population in the area who suffer from various types of chronic as well as mental health illnesses that are leading to their poor health outcomes (Northwood et al 2018). The older population often suffer from physical inactivity and lack of leisure activities, suffer from low or no economic income which results in the development of several diseases during this age and at the same time, are not able to effectively access the healthcare services which does not help in empowering and enabling them to lead healthy lives that have resulted in poor health outcomes in the region (Faiola, Papautsky and Isola 2019).
Challenges Faced by the Rural and Remote Population
Hence, to overcome the issue of determinants of health among the remote and rural population in Western Australia, the health plan suggests the importance of building key partnerships with recognized authorities who will help in the successful implementation of the plan (Javanparast et al 2019). Through the partnership, duplication of programs can be reduced, communication and understanding of the role of every individual will be improved, which will help in increasing efficiency and availability of resources and skills that will help in empowering and enabling the population to lead healthy lives (Corbin, Jones and Barry 2018).
Conclusion
Thus, to conclude it should be noted that the health plan effectively and efficiently intends to empower and enable people of remote and rural populations to lead healthy lives by focusing on priority areas like healthy eating, optimizing health outcomes, creating awareness regarding drug, alcohol, and smoking habits and also highlighting the increasing concern of overweight and obesity. All these issues have become prevalent due to various social, environmental, and biological determinants of health which are having a direct impact on the health of the population. Hence, the health plan intends to address the determinants of health through partnerships so that it might contribute to healthier outcomes.
References
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