Population health
Order Instructions:
What must be done to intervene and ensure that history does not repeat itself for future populations? This week, you examine the impact of the historical roots of social disparities on health of populations in Africa and Latin America. As you go through this week’s Learning Resources, think about what we can learn from history. This week, you consider developing a policy in a country you selected and think about various issues in practicing population health.
Objectives
Students will:
• Analyze the impact of determinants on health outcomes for countries
• Analyze public issues in health literacy and cultural awareness
• Identify the relationship between health inequality and life expectancy in selected countries
• Identify efforts to reduce health inequities
• Analyze policy development and country support
For your Final Project, share some of your ideas on how you can use the knowledge and insights gained in this course to promote positive social change in your community and the world.
To prepare for the Final Project, review all the week’s Learning Resources and consider possible issues you might encounter when implementing a policy.
Final Project (7–10 pages):
In developing a policy in the country you selected, consider the following:
• Explain the rationale for selecting the country.
• Describe the social determinants of health in the country that you would need to address. Explain why you need to address these determinants.
• Explain the possible public issues you might encounter in health literacy and cultural awareness in this country.
• Describe the relationship between health inequality/inequities and life expectancy for the population in your selected country.
• Describe two current efforts in this country (you selected) to reduce health inequities.
• Explain how you might develop a health policy so that it gets the support of the country you selected. Note: Take into account the culture of the country.
Articles:
1. Wilkinson, R., & Pickett, K. (2010). The spirit level: Why greater equality makes societies stronger. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Press.
Chapter 15, “Equality and Sustainability” (pp. 217–234)
2. Alles, M., Eussen, S., Ake-Tano, O., Diouf, S., Tanya, A., Lakati, A., . . . Mauras, C. (2013). Situational analysis and expert evaluation of the nutrition and health status of infants and young children in five countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Food and Nutrition Bulletin, 34(3), 287–298.
3. Baum, F. (2008). The Commission on the Social Determinants of Health: Reinventing health promotion for the twenty-first century? Critical Public Health, 18(4), 457–466.
4. Dankwa-Mullan, I., Rhee, K. B., Williams, K., Sanchez, I., Sy, F. S., Stinson, N., & Ruffin, J. (2010). The science of eliminating health disparities: Summary and analysis of the NIH summit recommendations. American Journal of Public Health, 100(Suppl. 1), S12–S18.
5. Jones, C. M. (2010). The moral problem of health disparities. American Journal of Public Health, 100(Suppl. 1), S47–S51.
6. Koh, H. K., & Nowinski, J. M. (2010). Health equity and public health leadership. American Journal of Public Health, 100(Suppl. 1), S9–S11.
7. Kruk, M. E., Porignon, D., Rockers, P. C., & Van Lerberghe, W. V. (2010). The contribution of primary care to health and health systems in low- and middle-income countries: A critical review of major primary care initiatives. Social Science & Medicine, 70(6), 904–911.
8. Venkatapuram, S. (2010). Global justice and the social determinants of health. Ethics & International Affairs, 24(2), 119–130.
9. Hashim, J., Chongsuvivatwong, V., Phua, K. H., Popcock, N., Teng, Y. M., Chhem, R. K., . . . Lopez, A. (2012). Health and healthcare systems in Southeast Asia. Retrieved from http://unu.edu/publications/articles/health-and-healthcare-systems-in-southeast-asia.html
10. Gapminder (n.d.). Retrieved February 13, 2014, from http://www.gapminder.org/
11. Rudan, I., O’Brien, K. L., Nair, H., Liu, L., Theodoratou, E., Qazi, S., . . . Campbell, H. (2013). Epidemiology and etiology of childhood pneumonia in 2010: Estimates of incidence, severe morbidity, mortality, underlying risk factors and causative pathogens for 192 countries. Journal of Global Health, 3(1).
Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3700032/pdf/jogh-03-010401.pdf
12. UNICEF Bangladesh. Health and nutrition. (n.d.). Retrieved February 13, 2014, from http://www.unicef.org/bangladesh/health_nutrition_311.htm
13. Weiss, M. G., Somma, D., Karim, F., Abouihia, A., Auer, C., Kemp, J., & Jawahar, M. S. (2008). Cultural epidemiology of TB with reference to gender in Bangladesh, India, and Malawi. The International Journal of TB & Lung Disease, 12(7). Retrieved from http://www.who.int/tdr/publications/journal-supplements/cultural-epidemiology-tb/en/index.html
14. World Health Organization. (2010). Health system in Bangladesh. Retrieved from http://ban.searo.who.int/EN/Section25.htm
15. World Health Organization. (2012). Health systems in sub-Saharan Africa: What is their status and role in meeting the health millennium development goals? http://www.aho.afro.who.int/en/ahm/issue/14/reports/health-systems-sub-saharan-africa-what-their-status-and-role-meeting-health
Please apply the Application Assignment Rubric when writing the Paper.
I. Paper should demonstrate an excellent understanding of all of the concepts and key points presented in the texts.
II. Paper provides significant detail including multiple relevant examples, evidence from the readings and other sources, and discerning ideas.
III. Paper should be well organized, uses scholarly tone, follows APA style, uses original writing and proper paraphrasing, contains very few or no writing and/or spelling errors, and is fully consistent with doctoral level writing style.
IV. Paper should be mostly consistent with doctoral level writing style.
SAMPLE ANSWER
Introduction
The health status of every population in any country is a crucial towards the development of this country. A healthy population will be able to work together and constitute in development of the country while an unhealthy population will drag behind in development as more time is taken to improve this status. The health status, therefore, remains as a tough challenge in most of the developing countries most especially African countries and the Latin America (Frey,& Temple, 2009). Importantly, these countries are mostly faced with intellectual disabilities (ID) and thus, call for the nee of establishing national initiatives to handle this exclusive health need of its population. As such, this paper will focus on the health status of Guatemala country as one of the Latin American country, discuss the social factors affecting its health status and elaborate on public concerns that might be encountered when addressing the health literacy and cultural awareness. Moreover, the paper will look into the relationship between the life expectancy and health inequities of this country as well as the efforts made by this country to improve its health status.
Guatemala is the biggest and most populated country amongst the Central American countries. The population of this country is rapidly growing and young that is mainly a rural based population. However, it has been noted as a country with the poorest social outcomes compared to other Latin American countries as most of its children below five years suffer from chronic starvation and about 290 women pass away from the pregnancy difficulties (Centre for Economic and Social Rights [CESR], 2014). In addition, it has the lowest human progress that is based in terms of health, life expectancy and education outcomes as compared to the other countries.
As such, the health status of this country calls for serious attention to the whole globe and the associated professionals (CESR, 2014).In response to this, ICEFI
(InstitutoCentroamericano de EstudiosFiscales)That is a research body was formed. Together with Guatemalan specialists were mandated to research on the various ways to improve the political economy and health state of this country. After the research was conducted, a report was laid down that resolved that failure of economic progress and failure to realize the political rights of the Guatemalans was due to lack of political will by the ruling government to contribute more in preserving those rights (CESR, 2014).
Congruently, most of the Guatemalans are living in poverty especially, those in rural areas. Despite putting more effort in improving the health situations in Guatemala, it still remains to be amongst the countries that are having higher maternal mortality rate in Central America (CESR, 2014). The leading cause of this is the poor allocation of resources to the maternal health by the state making it hard to monitor and implement the right heath measures in the country.
The advancement of poor health situation in Guatemala has been accelerated by various factors that directly or indirectly favor these poor health status. Apparently, the major social determinants of health status in Guatemala is the political and socioeconomic factors (Marini, 2010). These factors comprises of the wide set of cultural, functional and structural features of social system that highly influence the people’s health on a daily basis. Further, the daily happenings on an individual also affect their health status as it is through this that determines the types of diseases that one contract. Additionally, society work plays a vital role in fighting or boosting the health status of any country and, therefore, it’s the role of the society set up organizations that aid in health promotion, treatment of diseases and disease prevention. However, the socioeconomic state of Guatemala is poorly run in that most of the people are poor especially those living in rural areas and, therefore, it is hard to set-up organizationsthat creates awareness to the members of the society.
Moreover, the political context of any country can either worsen the health status or make it better. This solely depends on the ruling governance, public policies, societal values and microeconomic policies (World Health Organization [WHO], 2012). It is the governmental role to make sure that there are sufficient resources in all health institutions. As such, poor governance in Guatemala aids in the deteriorating poor health services where there is under-funding of health institutions leading to poor service provision (WHO, 2012).
Correspondingly, the structure of the society influence the health status of every country that cuts across the making of the society as well as its cultural and social believes. Through this societal structure that determines what the society takes as good for them and what it abandons. Moreso, the social position of every individual determines how they get the access of the health services. This incorporates the education level and the income level of every individual is what regulates how each gets access of the health services. In Guatemala, the largest percentage of the sick people are poor and they are not in a position of accessing better health services as they are low-income earners(WHO, 2012).
Similarly, gender variation amongst the society plays a critical role in health due to its crucial effects on the development of hierarchies in the allocation of resources and division of labor (Ishida, 2009). Most of the jobs are allocated depending on the sex, and different values allocated to those roles for them to access and have control over crucial social protection possessions including; employment, education, and health services. Evidently, in Guatemala death rate is different across the gender since more women tend to die than men (Ishida, 2012). This trend is experienced as more deaths are caused by pregnancy complications.
To control all these problems, there rises need to educate the public on the health matters and create awareness to the community on the matters concerning their health. This is one of the ways that can be used to overcome all these un-favoring health determinants. As such, nurses are mandated to go out in the field, interact with the public, educate them and provide health care to them. However, despite this effort by every government, nurses and other professionals are faced with various difficulties as they carry out their awareness programs due to serving varied population of patients (Wittner, 2012). Amongst the many challenges facing nurses are based on the linguistic, language and literacy levels among the patients and members of the public. Although in the nurses are taught on how to handle all the difficulties associated with patients, this remains a difficult task to handle a diversified population of patients (Singleton, 2009).
Cultural competence being the skills of providers and organizations being in a position of distributing effective health care services without inconveniencing any patient is yet affected by this diversified population of the patients (Wittner, 2012). Due language barriers and low level of health literacy amongst the patients and members of the public, it becomes hard for the nurses to provide culturally competent services. Also, due to low literacy amongst the patients, it becomes hard for them to read any instructions given by physicians and during public awareness (Wittner, 2012).
Moreso, the cultural beliefs of every society plays a serious role in provision of the culturally competent services and, therefore, it is very important for the ones involved in providing these services to understand the culture of the public they are serving. In Guatemala, all these factors limits the interaction time between the service offers and the patients thus risking the lives of the patients suffering from chronic diseases who need more time. Equally, lack of cultural competence leads to the provision of poor health services and lack of satisfaction of the offered services due to low quality of patient to doctor interaction.
Finally, creation of awareness towards the public is in Guatemala is also challenged by the health care practices and beliefs in that some ethnic groups in the country does not believe in the science-oriented things (Baum, 2008). Therefore, this poses a great challenge to the people implementing the awareness programs to convince these people that workability of their mission. This becomes a hard task when dealing with the mentally challenged patients who believe that mental illness is brought by possession of evil spirits and, therefore means that the personnel dealing with such a person must fully understand the belief of every patient and be in a position of interfering with their beliefs in the correct way as they treat them.
It’s vividly clear that in the hardship associated in accessing the health services in Guatemala is led by unequal distribution of resources amongst its citizens. As such, it is simple for some people to settle hospital bills and access health services even from private hospitals whereas it is hard for others to access public hospitals (WHO, 2012). As a result, life inequity and social exclusion come up which tends to hinder the vast majority of the people from accessing better health services (Wright, 2009). Importantly, life inequities remain as the main hindrance in the provision better and improved health conditions in Guatemala. Significantly, life inequality is distributed on the basis of the socioeconomic levels of lives where the mortality rate of poor people is double than that of well-being people (Wright, 2009).
The life expectancy amongst the Guatemalans is also based on the life inequity, where the percentage of successful births is high for the rich people unlike for the poor ones (Jones, 2010). Moreover, the dissemination education amongst varies on the basis of the income distribution implying that children from well-being families gets quality education that improves their level of literacy. Besides, the increasing elderly population in Guatemala does not mean that they are living a comfortable life. The old population combined with the declining fertility rate in Guatemala has led to the deterioration of the economic, health and social life of the Guatemalans more is incurred when taking care of this old population (Jones, 2010). Consequentially, it is the role of the state government to minimize the gap between the living standards of the Guatemalans that will in turn boost their health, social and economic life.
Despite all these health challenges affecting the Guatemalan, its government has put several projects in an attempt of improving the health condition of its citizens. After the passing of the peace contracts in 1996, the new constitution of the Guatemalan stated that it an elementary right for every citizen to have access of a health care (Pena, 2013). Though it has remained a hard task for the government to implement this right, this government has tried to improve the health condition of its health institutions (Johnson, 2013). It has achieved this by improving its Ministry of Public Health and by involving other non-governmental organizations in the provision of better health services to its citizens. Moreover, the government setup a program (Expansion of Coverage program) that aims at improving the access of nutrition and health services to the poor people residing in the rural areas (World Bank Group [WBG], 2014). The program is implemented through the collaboration of government and various NGO’s where they are aiming at ensuring that they overcome the dominating life inequity amongst the poor people.
Conclusion
In general, therefore, the health state of any country solely depends on the ruling government that is held responsible for the provision of better health services and ensuring that they are easily accessible to every citizen. Also, the government should increase the number of professional doctors in the public hospitals to reduce the number of un-attended patients and to be able to handle the large population of the country. Similarly, for the health services and conditions of Guatemala to improve, the issue of life inequity must be handled and its effects controlled so as to improve its life expectancy. Consistently, cultural competence in the country as well as literacy and language barrier need to be addressed. In turn, this will ease the doctor’s and all involved party work as well as make public awareness effective thus, making the functionality of health institutions efficient.
References
Baum, F.,(2008). The Commission on the Social Determinants of Health: Reinventing health promotion for the twenty-first century? Critical Public Health, 18(4),
Centre for Economic and Social Rights,(2014). Center for Economic and Social Rights: Guatemala [Web at]
<http://www.cesr.org/section.php?id=33> Retrieved 20th, October 2014.
Frey, G. C., & Temple, V. A.,(2009).Health Promotion for Latin Americans with Intellectual Disabilities. [Web at] <http://www.scielosp.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0036-36342008000800010 > Retrieved 20th, October 2014.
Ishida, K.S., (2012). International Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health: Ethnic Inequality in Guatemalan Women’s Use of Modern Reproductive Health Care. In-Print.
Jones, C. M.,(2010). The moral problem of health disparities. American Journal of Public Health, 100(Suppl. 1), S47–S51.
Johnson, C.D.,(2013). Social capital: theory, measurement and outcomes. Nova Science Publisher’s, Inc.: Hauppauge, New York.
Literacy” OJIN: The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing. Vol. 14, No. 3, Manuscript 4.
Marini, A.,(2012). Three essays on economic determinants of child malnutrition
Pena, C. L.,(2013). Guatemala – Improving Access to Health Care Services through the Expansion of Coverage Program (PEC): The Case of Guatemala. Universal Health Coverage (UNICO) Washington, DC. Studies series; no. 19.
The World Bank Group, (2014). Improving Access to The Health Care Services through the Expansion of Coverage Program: The Case of Guatemala [Web at] <https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/13283 > Retrieved 20th, October 2014
Singleton, K.,& Krause, E.,(2009). “Understanding Cultural and Linguistic Barriers to Health
Wittner, J.G.,& Root, J.,(2012). Gendered Worlds. Oxford University Press, USA: New York.
World Health Organization, (2012). Health in the Americas: Health Determinants and Inequalities[Web at] <http://www.paho.org/saludenlasamericas/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=58&Itemid=55&lang=en >Retrieved 20th, October 2014.
World Health Organization,(2012). Dementia a public health priority. World Health Organization: Geneva
Wright, L.E.,(2009). Diet, health, and status among the Pasión Maya: A reappraisal of the collapse. Vanderbilt University Press: Nashvil.
We can write this or a similar paper for you! Simply fill the order form!
