Overview of Public Health Strategies & Policy in UK

Introduction

Public health is basically the art as well as science of improving and protecting health of the people and entire community at large. In short, public health relates to changing the health behaviour of people and improving their lifestyle. The main aim of this report is to study various aspects related to public health along with the prevalence of various diseases and devise the various actions which could be taken for ensuring well-being of people.

This report gives a brief overview of aspects of strategies of public health, emergence of public health policy in UK, comparison of health as well as being within regional population, reasons for differences, actions for mitigating differences and methods for preventing diseases.

Save your time!
We can take care of your essay

• Proper editing and formatting
• Free revision, title page, and bibliography
• Flexible prices and money-back guarantee

Place an order

Task 1

Aspects of strategies of public health

Public health mainly aims to promote the health of diverse population and hence protect the health as well as being of the entire community. There are generally various aspects of the public health strategies namely

Recognizing health needs

This is one of the most important strategy of public health where the main objective is to recognize the trends as well as patterns among wide population with the help of statistics. Identifying health needs of people are highly essential and forms the integral part of the public health (Baum, 2016). Through analysing the health needs, healthcare professionals are able to make effective decisions like which medication to produce, what diagnosis is required etc. On the while, by assessing the health needs of entire population organizations are able to loo at mortality as well as morbidity rates which are currently prevailing in the country and thus helps the organizations and government to take effective actions.

Controlling the communicable diseases

Communicable diseases mainly spread from person to person through virus, bacteria etc. Thus, controlling wide range of communicable diseases is one of the most important strategy of public health. Various communicable diseases like Measles, Rubella are the most highly prevalent diseases which requires immediate control. Thus, this is the another important aspect of public health strategy where the main aim to eliminate or mitigate the outbreak of communicable diseases to high extent (Brownson and et.al.,2017).

Promoting health

The most well-known as well as remarkable strategy of public health is promoting health of entire population through the use of various campaigns, seminars and educating people. Te major aspect of this strategy is to educate people and raise awareness among them for changing their health behavior and making them understand the importance of leading healthier life. In this strategy, people are educated regarding different implications of the health and a healthier lifestyle is promoted (Gostin and Wiley, 2016).

The emergence of public health policy in UK

Poor law amendment 1834

In order to promote the health of poor people, this act was established which addressed that if poor requires food, shelter, resources, clothes then they would have to work in workhouse. Popel would have to overcome their bad conditions of living as well as minimum meals. This policy was being established with the main aim to support the poor in UK and thus helped to raise awareness among them regarding the implications of the poor health (Merai and et.al.,2016).

1848 Public health act

This act was mainly amended by Edwin Chadwick wherein helping the poor to lead a healthier life and providing them better jobs were given importance. This act in 1848 changed the condition of sewers and thus made an improvement within them for ensuring that there is no waste lying on streets. This eventually prevented diseases and provided people with safe drinking water (Baum, 2016).

This growing prevalence of health issues among people of UK compelled government to take major steps and since then, national government along with federal and state government established large number of policies and thus transformed the 21st century

Smoking free policy

In the year 2016, UK government came up with the new policy in order to put a ban on tobacco-producing companies. In the year 2016, a ban on the smoking was one of the major amendment being made by the government and thus the major initiative taken for the public health of people. Within this policy, government decided to put a heavy fine and charge on the companies importing or exporting tobacco and increased the taxes on tobacco. This eventually decreased the outbreak of major diseases like lung caner, heart problems in UK (Brownson and et.al.,2017).

Task 2

Comparison of health as well as being within regional population

England

The health ans well-being data in England has been highly imperative from past few years and the health of people in England has improved to a great rate. In the year 2018, the average rate of people suffering from anxiety including youth and adults has decreased from around 2.53 to more than 2.32. Besides this, the average life expectancy, as well as satisfaction, has improved to around 3.4% in England along with a great improvement in the nearby areas to more than 4.6%. Along with this, the mortality rate in England has declined from around 45.3% to more than 23.7% and there has been a great increase among people regarding the awareness for different diseases. The average ratings of happiness in England raised from 7.52 to nearly 7.56 according to the report of 2018. Besides this, as per the report of WHO around 82.1% people reported their health as either excellent or very good making England a healthy country where most of the people merely suffers from health diseases (Gostin and Wiley, 2016).

Wales

Wales has been the widely known country where majority of people are facing various health-related diseases and the major cause behind this is the poor healthcare facilities and legislation. The life expectancy in Wales has decreased from past few years to more than 32.5% and inequalities has dominated Wales to high extent. More than 40000 cases of drug abuse are being reported in Wales every day and this figure mostly contains youth between age group 15 to 23. The health issues in Wales relating to heart ad lung problems has increased from 34.6% to more than 65.7% with a great rise in percentage of depression among people. According to the report of 2019, more than 70000 people suffer from mental illness every day among which around 60000 people die due to lack of proper treatment and facilities (Merai and et.al.,2016).

Reasons for the Differences Between Two Regions for Current and Future Well Being

According to the above information it can be said that the main reason of difference between England and Wales for the current and future health and well being are related to the health care facilities that are provided by the government in local health care and social care organizations. These challenges and differences that are faced by people in Wales just because of lack of facilities and resources in health care facilities. In England the standards of health care services is much better than the Wales. This better resources and facilities provided by government and health care organization provide better opportunities to the organization to live healthy and better life style (Holland, Mossialos and Merkel, 2018). In Wales lack resources and facilities are responsible for poor current and future health conditions. Some of the main factor that can affect these health standards in Wales and England are Political Instability, Poor Planning and environmental conditions. These are major factors that can affect health and well being of people.

Political instability is major issue in this process. This conditions of government reduce their capability to implement various policy in specific region. Resistance of opposition and corruption at different level can affect the health care facilities and well being of people of Wales. The other factor for this differences is poor implementation plan. This is important for the authorities to make effective plan to design and implement various facilities that are related to the health and social care organization (Ramaswami, Bayer and Galea, 2018). The most crucial factor for this difference is related to the difference in the environmental condition in this two regions. This difference in environment force the government to make different plans and policies for these two areas.

Ways to Improve Current and Future Health & Well Being

There are different processes can be used by the government to provide better facilities to people and health care organization in order to reduce the difference between two particular regions of UK. By managing better information and reducing complexities in implementation of health policies government can provide better health standards to people with effective health style (Blanchet and et.al.,2017). This is how various policies and processes can be used by the government to reduce the differences of Current and Future Health and Well being of people.

Task 3

Health protection and promotion

Communicable disease

Communicable diseases are such medical issues which are spread through person to person. Individual can come in contact with this illness through blood transmission, bodily fluids, airborne viruses etc. HIV is considered as most dangerous disease.

HIV is the most dangerous illness which badly affect immune system hence individual’s body fail to fight back. Transmission of this virus is done through blood, breast milk, semen etc.

It is difficult for medical professionals to determine the HIV within-person in initial phases. HIv has become the global issue as more than 37.9 million people are suffering from HIV.

Symptoms

Individual suffers from high fever and headache

There are rashes in the body of infected person and individual has to bear sever pain in sore throat

Swollen lymph gland is another symptom detect during the initial phase.

Prevention strategies

Though it is a serious issue but still there are many tenements are available for the AIDS. Individual must prevent themselves by taking assistance of various strategies.

• Individual needs to take care during making sexual relationship with partner (Dowell, Blazes and Desmond-Hellmann, 2016). Sexual relationship must be having with limited partners otherwise it can increase risk of suffering from HIV. Apart from this, there should be safe sex by using lubricants, condoms etc.
• Injecting equipment’s must be clean so that risk of HIV can be minimised, local hospital authorities must take care of it , so that it does not transmit to other person.
• Taking timely treatment such as antiretroviral therapy is the most common and effective prevention strategy that can aid the person in getting recover from this illness soon.

Non-communicable disease

This is another kind of disease which does not get transmitted into other person directly. These kinds of illness occur due to genetic, behaviour, environemtnal elements.

Diabetes is the most common non-communicable disease which is caused due to high consuoption of sugar.

Causes of Diabetes

• One of the major cause of increasing rate of diabetes patients are that lack of awareness towards health diet. People are taking fast food frequently which affect their metabolism and increases chances of suffering from this issue.
• Age is another major case, with the increasing age chances of suffering from diabetes gets increased.
• Personal or biological histroy is another major factors due to which such issue can take place.

Symptoms

• Individual feels hunger in shorter dyration
• The most common sign of diabetes is that person’s fails to gain weight
• Blurry vision and extreme fatigue are major signs of diabetes.

Prevention

• Person must workout on regular bases, if person do excerise regularkly then it will help individual in controling over level of sugar which will help in preventing from suffering from this illness (Kohl III, Murray and Salvo, 2019).
• By having low carb diet or healtbhy diet individual can improve their health conditon and can decease chances of sufering from diabetes.
• Smoke is another major cause and if individual quit smoking them it will be better in preventing themeselves from suffering from this illness.

Conclusion

This report is concluding information that is related to the key aspects of health strategies and origination of public health policies in UK since 19th century to the present condition. The differences between current and future health and well being has been studied for Wales and England. According to CPD a booklet is prepared that is about two diseases in which one is communicable and other one is non communicable. This diseases has been critically has been explained in the report.

References:

Books & Journals

1. Baum, F., 2016. The new public health (No. Ed. 4). Oxford University Press.
2. Blanchet, K and et.al.,2017. Evidence on public health interventions in humanitarian crises. The Lancet.390(10109). pp.2287-2296
3. Brownson, R.C and et.al.,2017. Evidence-based public health. Oxford university press.
4. Dowell, S.F., Blazes, D. and Desmond-Hellmann, S., 2016. Four steps to precision public health. Nature News.540(7632). p.189.
5. Gostin, L.O. and Wiley, L.F., 2016. Public health law: power, duty, restraint. Univ of California Press.
6. Holland, W., Mossialos, E. and Merkel, B., 2018. Public health policies in the European Union. Routledge.
7. Kohl III, H., Murray, T. and Salvo, D., 2019. Foundations of physical activity and public health. Human Kinetics Publishers.
8. Merai, R and et.al.,2016. CDC grand rounds: a public health approach to detect and control hypertension. Morbidity and mortality weekly report.65(45). pp.1261-1264.
9. Ramaswami, R., Bayer, R. and Galea, S., 2018. Precision medicine from a public health perspective. Annual review of public health.39. pp.153-168