More handpicked essays just for you.
The role of public health in epidemiology
Write essay on duties of public health in the society
Write essay on duties of public health in the society
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: The role of public health in epidemiology
In this article written by David Hemenway, Why We Don’t Spend enough on Public Health it takes a look at how public health versus the practice of medicine viewed. The article describes Public Health as the underdog and the poor relation in the Field of Medicine. Public Health doesn’t receive the accolades that the Practice of Medicine gets, clearly outlined in the article Practice of Medicine being “flashy and accomplishment widely celebrated”, whereas Public Health described as “being mundane and invisible.” (Hemenway, 2010) This article shines a light on how underappreciated and less notoriety, Public Health receives; the writer, however, places emphases on the important role it plays in society. Hemenway touches on how underfunded and that
Dr. Atul Gawande, a Harvard Medical School graduate and writer for The New Yorker, phenomenally illustrates the unknown side of healthcare professions in his book, Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science. By exploring the ethical and analytical aspects of medicine while entertaining readers with relatable anecdotes, Gawande impresses on his audience the importance of recognizing the wonders of the healthcare field, as well as the fallibility of those within it.
Shi L. & Singh D.A. (2011). The Nation’s Health. Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Throughout this book, author Robert Welch demonstrates values of compassion, caution, and knowledge. These values interweave in Welch’s explanations of how the healthcare system of this country has so much money invested in it, and yet, manage patients receive so little care. This country has a healthcare system that is currently operating out of a broken model that does not place value on individual health, but on profit incentive.
Marks, J. H. (2005, December 26). The silence of the doctors. The Nation, 26. Retrieved June 6, 2011, from PsycINFO.
The health of the American people lags behind those from other developed countries. Federal public health agencies have a wide range of responsibilities and functions which includes public health research, funding, and oversight of direct healthcare providers. It has been a long time since changes have been made to the way the federal government structures its health care roles and programs outside of Medicare and Medicaid (Trust, 2013). With healthcare reform on the horizon now is the time to invest time and money in prevention, not medicine, making it a top priority to improve health and prevent disease. Funding efforts at all levels of the public health continuum need to focus on developing programs aimed at such leading initiatives as tobacco cessation, improving nutrition, supplying safe workplaces, and increasing physical activity in all ages of the population. People should have equal access to quality preventative medicine and education.
However, these meanings, of what it once meant to be a physician as was established by the white coat, are currently being eroded by the recent changes in the way scientific medicine is now being seen. This may be as a result of the emergence of a capitalistic or rather profit driven medical system, or due to a number of many other factors. Whatever the case, one thing remains for sure, the subsequent tension between the profession and the society is affecting the interaction between the individual patients –and the physicians, gradually creating irreparable rift of distrust, and rendering null and void what the ‘white coats’ were created to stand for.
Peter Conrad’s book, The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders, examined several cases of human conditions, once viewed as normal, now considered as medical issues. Conrad defined this transition of human problems to disorders that are medically defined, studied, diagnosed and treated as “medicalization”. Specifically, Conrad discussed certain conditions, such as adult ADHD, as age related phenomena that have been medicalized. Throughout, Conrad demonstrated how these issues became medically defined because of the current research and financing structure of medicine in the United States. Those newly defined illnesses changed people’s perceptions and expectations of health and old age, thus dramatically altering society’s expectations of medicine and subsequent life quality. Conrad’s ethnography is a good example of the ethnomedical approach to medical anthropology that addressed several health conditions that are prominent in the United States. He culminated his book by arguing medicalization primarily serves as a form of social control, solving problems with individuals and not society. While the book clearly explained a wide range of negative causes and effects of medicalization, Conrad only acknowledged a few examples of successful resistance briefly in his last chapter. In order to empower its readers beyond education, the book should have examined these instances of anti-medicalization to find similarities and derive productive countermeasures for individuals to follow. Conrad thoroughly outlined the history, examples and influencing factors that promote medicalization, but failed to offer any combative solution to the resulting problems of medicalization.
The South contributed to the emergence of public health strategy in the United States by demonstrating the need for non-passive government presence in times of economic and social hardship. The South was able to have implement public health strategies during the Civil War, but their destitute state after the war proved difficult in maintaining successful public health strategies.
Wilsford, David. 1991 Doctors and the State: The Politics of Health Care in France and the United States. Durham: Duke University Press.
“If you look at the human condition today, not everyone is well fed, has access to good medical care, or the physical basics that provide for a healthy and a happy life.” This quote by Ralph Merkle shows that something so easily taken for granted is healthcare. Most of us wouldn’t even think about it as a privilege, something that has just always been there and always will. In America, we would never even imagine not being able to receive medical care in our times of need, in other countries that is not at all the case. Many will die from easily preventable and treatable diseases because they do not have medical care. The charity Doctors of the World is committed to helping those who do not have easy access to medical care
...are immense, as it has only finite resources to use, but needs its services to be clinically effective as well as able to meet the needs of individual’s, their choice of preferences and be value for money. To accomplish this NHS will need to harness more securely its investment in surveillance, analysis and budgets, and therefore establishing a framework that would than serve and provide a better health outcome to the entire nation. Lastly, UK spends about half of what is spent by the US (about 14 % of GDP) on its healthcare, yet in US out of 250 million over 30 million citizens are still without health care provision. Thus, despite such a massive expenditure by US government, failure to provide basic health care to millions of its citizen is not overcome, however, that is certainly not the case in UK (Bilton, et al., 2002; Christopher, 2004; Smith I. , 2007).
At an early stage in my medical school in Iraq, I realized the great positive impact of public health on the community in health education orientation, disease prevention and health well-being as a general and what affirmed it later, my clinical practice as a physician in Iraq first then Dubai later. Public health was a major integral block in my clinical practice to educate the people towards a healthier lifestyle and implementing the preventative screening measures necessary to get a healthy, well protected community. After moving to the United States, I took the initiative to familiarize myself with the US healthcare system by doing many clinical rotations in different family practices and pediatric clinics in Houston, TX. After these rotations, I was enamored with the delivery of public health measures in each clinic, according to the US public health standards. My fondness for public health drove me to get an opportunity to be a health educator
To begin with, we have to identify what exactly means for the words “public health”. In general, we usually divided into two different areas. Public health which refers to the health of the environment surrounding in public, such as public transport and public infrastructure. Another explanation of public health means to prevent disease produced by different channels and methods, which also is the most common meaning and what I will mainly working for this paper about public health. First of all, when people mentioned about public health, United States and Japan would be the first two countries to compare with. Because the United States and Japan are basically two of the countries that everybody thinks of the most robust public health system.
Public Health is the most important aspect of medicine. My studies in Public Health will go a very long way to help me grasp the proper concepts and tools needed to work with the government to bring sustainable solutions to health care problems faced by various communities today. Public Health issues touch almost every family in the USA today. I know that if the health sector was better funded, better equipped, and better managed, with clear and effective policies, this kind of suffering could been avoided. I want to go into public health because I believe strongly that I can contribute not only to my fellow Americans, but also to people all over the world. I anticipate that through proper planning, interventions and implementation of effective policies, one will be able to bring about much-needed change through my work with an NGO or non-profit affiliated with the UN.
Educating the public to recognize the signs and dangers of myocardial infarctions could lead to earlier interventions and prevent life endangering delays. Furthermore, the ability to afford medical procedures is a huge barrier for many of the patients. As a result, life threatening delays often occurred because of considerations for the cost of the procedures. It became clear that meeting the health needs of the public took more than education; it would also take an interdisciplinary effort to eliminate health inequities resulting from disparities in income, social status, education, employment, social and physical work environments. However, all I had were raw ideas. It was clear to me that I would need the formalization of a public health education to obtain the skills needed to actualize my