Healthcare Support Services – New to Health Care With today’s social, cultural, political and economic shifts, public health has become a huge topic of concern. More and more communities are depending on public health organizations for information, education and assistance in maintaining a healthy society. In The Untilled Fields of Public Health, Charles-Edward Amory Winslow defines public health as “the science and art of preventing diseases, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals. Public health is a non exclusive entity. In public health, the “community” in which an issue is concerned with includes all people affected by a specific concern, illness, affliction, policy or law. Public health considers the community, not an individual, as the patient in which a proactive stance is taken, rather than a reactive one. Public health uses demographics and statistics to predict health issues and acts in accordance with those predictions to try and prevent illness or disease that a community might be at a high risk for.
Public health accomplishes this by promoting awareness through providing education and information, as well as providing services that might be needed for the prevention of said illness or disease. The demographics of public health, as a whole, are non existent. Public health is an all inclusive organization. They do not exclude any one culture, race, income grade, region or country. Public health, as a whole, is concerned with the health of the population of the entire world. Every community, no matter how big or small, or how rich or poor, or where it’s located has its own public health concerns.
That is the basis of public health as a whole. However, demographics can be applied to smaller groups or communities on a case by case basis. For instance, a few years ago when the Swine Flu was spreading across the world and there were concerns of a pandemic breakout, demographically it was contained to Mexico or people who had traveled in or out of Mexico or people who had had contact with those travelers. The Swine Flu originated in Mexico, therefore the demographic statistics show a higher percentage of Hispanics in Mexico afflicted than, for example, Asians in the United States.
Public health offers many types of services. These services might include educational services, public awareness, printed information, handing out supplies and many other activities. Public health encompasses a broad scope of public services offered both by the government and private sectors of a community. Some types of services that are offered through organizations that belong to the public health scope might be nutrition education and assistance, such as Women, Infants and Children, better known as WIC or the SNAP program through the Department of Health and Human Services, better known as the Food Stamp Program.
Both of these services offer education and information on better nutrition of children and families, as well as financial assistance for purchasing healthier foods. Another organization that is encompassed by the public health definition would be vaccination clinics for children and elderly. These programs provide immunizations at low or no cost in order to prevent illness and disease. Without programs such as these, disease would be spread more rapidly and affect more and more of the population. Public health is fast becoming a new philanthropic trend as well.
More and more individuals and businesses are contributing financially to the public health industry. The idea that educating and informing a community in order to make them more aware of health concerns is quickly being realized as a valid way of preventing and controlling the spread of illness and disease, therefore more people are donating time, money and effort toward public health. The idea that a community can self determine their health, lifestyle and even their own mortality rate through education, information, awareness and healthier lifestyle practices is a leading force in the promotion of public health.
A well educated and proactive community can become healthier, more preventative of disease and therefore have a lower mortality rate. Educating communities on such issues as the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, obesity, drug abuse, cancers, HIV and AIDS and how they relate to the community statistically and demographically can make that community more aware of the concern and how it relates to them. This information can quite literally make the difference in an epidemic becoming a pandemic. Public health takes the concerns of a community and learns rom them, educates the public, works to prevent the reoccurrence of the issue at hand, and studies the statistics and information obtained to try to prevent it from happening again or in another community. This plays a vital role in the health care industry because it lessens the frequency of illness and disease, which in turn reduces the cost of health care overall. I chose public health because I feel public health services and programs will contribute to making the world healthier and reducing diseases world wide.
Also, public health will provide new avenues for low income and minorities to become healthier through the programs offered by public health organizations. Some low income and minorities do not have equitable access to healthy foods, lifestyles or medical care, especially preventative health care that others have. I feel this is a huge contributor to disease and illness in those demographic areas and public health can remedy this problem through education and services offered. For me, working in the public health sector of the health care industry would be time and research intensive but would be extremely rewarding personally and publicly.
Working to make communities more aware, preventing illness and disease, assisting in legislature, community advocacy and doing it all within the scope of public health would be a most fulfilling and desirable position for me in the health care industry. In a nutshell, public health is an all encompassing, all inclusive sector of the health care industry that holds a blind eye to race, economic status, culture and region but that has its eyes wide open in realizing education and preventative health care can, and will, make the difference. References: Winslow,C. -E. A. “The Untilled Fields of Public Health,” Science, n. s. 51 (1920), p. 23
