Health Promotion (Author’s Name) (Institutional Affiliation)

Explain the effects of socioeconomic influences on health.

Key factors such as the heredity, age and sex have a significant impact on health. The decision on choices that we also make count, but in most case this decisions are influenced by our surroundings, culture and other factors usually referred as determinant of health. Socioeconomic factors such as the education, income and social interconnection have a direct impact on health. These factors can strongly interact to have a significant effect on health both positively or negatively. The chances are, improvement in any of these three factors would lead to improvement in the health status as well as the behavior of the individuals or the group (Wheaton, 2000).

Those with low income, for instance, often have inadequate access to housing, nutrition, food, poor working conditions and so on this may have a negative impact on their social life leading to life stress. As the time goes by this life stress may result in diseases such as high blood measure or complication in the immune and circulatory. On the other hand, those who are financially stable are in most instances likely to face those disease threats that do not rely on material needs. The only needs maybe only need maybe home or job commitments of which they have control over.

Socioeconomic factors may also lead to psychological and social losses such as loss of one identity self-esteem, status, reduction in control, loss of time structure, sense of future and rise in humiliating experiences. One of the main causes of psychological changes is psycho-social stress that may lead to an altered state of mind such as the anxiety, apathy or even depression.

The level of social environment is lower where deprivation in finances is high. People who have good and working social connections have high chances to leave longer and have more inferior chances of having coronary heart diseases and not likely to report having cases of depression of even have a recurrence of cancer and are less prone to infectious illness compared to those with poor social networks(West & Shiffman, 2007)..

Policies to promote social equality would go a long way in health and should be executed hand in hand with action on economic as well as on physical regeneration in communities that are disadvantaged. Family support services should also be provided to help parents offer real and less disadvantaged life to their children. A sense of belonging to a society with no discrimination or prejudice will significantly reduce the high levels of crime, self-harm or even isolation.

2 Assess the relevance of government sources in reporting on inequalities in health.

Relevance is one of the first and essential principles that should highly be respected in any national statistical center. When releasing any form of information such as data and statistics one should try as relevant as possible so as to fulfill the requirement of the users in both public and private sector which we are then result in a dependable decisions made. Producing of official data or statistics should correspond to various users need and should satisfy basic information in every aspect and the right of information to the citizens.

The government is making more statistics and data available to the citizen than ever before through various platforms such as the Internet. It is also offering more platforms and opportunities for its citizen to participate on different discussion concerning the national health and mainly on the issue of inequality in health.

Most of this sources that government use to obtain information vary while some are from reliable organizations others are from contracted private researchers who to some extent just want to see the job completed. Some of the reports presented by the government have been done on a state of the art data programs. However this has only reduced the usefulness for most of the social policy makers in the health sector. It is because they mostly focus on routinely collected results that are not so sensitive to intervention. A more ‘sort of upstream’ measure is needed, which again occurs earlier in the course of life and can be altered within 5 years by a feasible programs and policies that are effective, and accurately portrays individual future life chances and health state (Wheaton, 2000).

Discuss reasons for barriers to accessing Healthcare.
There are so many different reason why people are not able to seek or obtain medical services. Access to health care is fundamental to health, and not only do people seek treatment through the private or publicly funded health centres but also benefits the public on disease prevention. However, some people face limitation to access to health services due to reasons such as socio-cultural issues, physical, language barriers or the cost involved due to non-insured health services (West & Shiffman, 2007).

Studies that have been done in the past has shown that racial disparities have been an important cause for existence of barriers to accessing health care. Differences due to race have been associated with the reduction in the quality of care in various medical centers that are perceived to belong to a particular race. This has been linked with another major barrier, language barrier. Those people who do not speak one official language have been found to be underserved due to miscommunication. Education has too contributed to this problem, in our today society people have actually embraced on the importance of education. This has resulted to those who are perceived educated to get high status in various fields such as employments and, as a result, a high income leading to less health service barrier.

Occupation also has a considerable impact on the obstacles leading to in access to healthcare services. In most instances, chronic patients who are unemployed will most likely face barriers that are economically oriented mainly because unemployed people have little to spend on. There are also geographical reasons which have resulted in physical barriers where those living in isolated regions usually will have difficulties in accessing health sectors or the cost involved for the transportation may be relatively high for them. It may eventually lead to them obtaining other medical services that are substandard for them and their families (Sondhi, 2010).

Analyze the links between government strategies and models of health promotion

Tobacco smoking leads to serious health hazards for the person who smoke and also those surrounding them. Smoking is one of the most avoidable causes of diseases and deaths yet claims millions every year, mainly through chronic diseases such as cancers, respiratory, digestive disorders and so on. Smoking cessation, a process where people are assisted to stop smoking tobacco has become one of the key public health solution used by the health institutions.

One of the most useful models that can be applied is the five A’s framework (ask, advise, assess, assist, arrange). Through this model, one should strongly advise patients to stop smoking by using motivational techniques while interviewing the smoking addict patient. If the patient is not motivated, using clinical contacts to insist on the rewards and importance of quitting at the same time emphasizing on the hazards of tobacco use.

The message should be repeated often at every possible opportunity. Specific patient may be offered pharmacologic assistance such as bupropion, therapies for nicotine replacement and varenicline. Using pharmacologic during smoking cessation may increase the rate of abstinence more than twice (Valente, 2002).However, different patient may have distinctive challenges in pharmacotherapy when used to control smoking cessation. Nicotine replacement therapies have a negative impact on increasing the rate of birth defect and should not be used during pregnancy period. It is on the other hand very safe to use on adolescent and far much effective compared to their effect on adults. One should, therefore, arrange for having a frequent contact with the patient mostly around their quitting period to emphasize cessation message.

Looking at the government response to the growing health epidemic one can conclude that there is much more to be done to reduce the health impact of smoking. Apart from laudable strategies to control tobacco by the government, deaths associated with smoking continue to rise. Over the past few years, the government has been trying to adopt a comprehensive approach to control smoking rates (Sondhi, 2010).

Some of this strategies have included total banning of tobacco promotion and advertising, restriction of public smoking as well as in the working places, smoking cessation and public education, clear and emphasized warning on tobacco product harm to body and also regulating tobacco to standards set by a health organization rather than those set by the tobacco industry’s themselves. The key to successfully implement these strategies is through winning a majority support from the public and making sure proper enforcement is carried out (Wheaton, 2000).

Explain the role of professionals in meeting government targets for health promotion.

A successful health professional doing health promotion should possess exceptional leadership quality so as to be able to incorporate governments strategies into one unitary goal. This professional will have to play major roles such assessing individual and community needs and ensure they do not impose an agenda on a given community without first understanding they exact wish of the community or the individual himself. Otherwise the government initiatives may be met by resistance from the residents. For this reason, these professionals carefully integrate surveys and polls into a given subject to test the possibility of a future outreach (Ulmer, 2012).

They also develop and plan health education programs based on their professional perspective. It is done through working in teams to formulate long-term strategies to roll out their respective programs. They set criteria for prioritizing plans based on public demand and the available budget. They then create awareness of the program to be enrolled before providing critical services.

They are also involved in managing most of these programs and the personnel recruited. They ensure that experts in different groups work together so as to offer program services directly to the targeted community. In most cases, team leaders will often hire publicists, social workers and other key professionals to be involved in deliverance of successful health promotion models based on government will. These team members once they are provided with necessary information and resources they become the central focus for the overall project manager who, in this case, is a professional promoter.

Most of these professional health promoters do not in most cases practice in the neighborhood and hospitals; they mainly operate at grass root level. This is where they get the opportunity of lobbying policy makers on the importance and the need for the community as well as the repulsion of various health care systems. They meet with politicians and mobilize public to political rallies with the aim of creating a platform for informing public about various changes concerning health care policies. (Smith, 2000)

Most of these governments strategies are not implemented blindly; research is conducted by the promoters. Research is essential in assessing medical conditions of the targeted communities. Researchers are funded by the government and after the research they can then advice on how to efficiently implement management strategies concerning the general welfare of the community or the public health.

what is the role of routines in promoting healthy living

Most of the people usually do have a problem in maintaining a routine. Some of the routine such as having a reasonable and a regular bedtime, eating, period of energizing activity and later on relaxing is not that simple for the majority of people. However having a routine that integrates our body requirement helps us to functional at our most optimum psychological level.

For the most of the smokers, research was conducted and showed that showed that counseling and therapy done on smokers on a routine basis increases the chances of a patient abandoning smoking practices. A significant number of smokers do wish to stop but only a few of them succeed. Approximately twenty percent of those who make effort to stop smoking receive specialist support from various experts. Doctors can easily spot patient willing to quit smoking and through integrating smoking cessation into a routine it becomes much more efficient and successful.

A routine should be simple and not inflexible or rigid making it difficult to maintain. Routine have shown to have a positive impact on young children's; this is through parents encouraging frequent habits such as eating, physical activity, sleeping and so on. Practicing this habits at a tender age of children's will have a long term positive impact on growing child's body and increase the capacity of them to learn. Routine promotes children emotional stability, safety and sense of security.

At a wider scope, routines are essential for sustenance of various health program, which is a common concern for those involved in health promotion. A routinized program may be defined by the occurrence of routine activities (Pender & Pender, 1996). These activities should have the four major qualities of any organizational routine that include rules, memory, values and adaptation. Routinization is a core process for sustenance of any health promotion of set activities that are being aimed at achieving a set objective and it is through these activities that the sustainable organization resources are mobilized. Sustainability of any health promotion would increase its viability, and this would naturally lead to satisfying result of any deployed health promotion program(Maibach & Parrott, 1995).

In conclusion, having an active routine within an organization, community or individual level will always result in a general positive outcome towards a healthy nation so long as proper procedures are put in place. Routine should be practiced as much as possible and those individuals such as smokers should be assisted by relevant skilled personnel towards realizing their wish.

Explain how health beliefs relate to theories of health behavior.

In behavioral medicine, experts have focused their interventions on various approaches that try to explore and predict people's health related behaviors. Some of these models include the health belief model, learning theory also known as classical conditioning, social cognitive behavior and reasoned and planned behavior theory. The models try to understand the various variables that influence individual behavior and then using the total of all variables to predict the possibility of a person engaging in a particular action (Conner & Norman, 2005).

According to social learning theory individuals will be involved in various behaviors in a particular situation if they see themselves capable of practicing it and if that behavior will have an end result that are valued by that individual. Therefore if a smoker has a higher value for probable consequence of smoking cessation such as improvement or health improvement and see themselves possible to abstain from smoking then they have a great chance of quitting smoking within a short period of time (Rutter & Quine, 2002).

On the other hand, those who do not care about their health or see themselves incapable of refraining from smoking will likely have fewer chances of quitting smoking. This is because they may not have the willingness of refraining from their smoking behavior (Conner & Norman, 2005). It is paramount to identify the major characteristics that influence smokers to quit from smoking habits. This characteristics may be obtained through exploring the various factors that promote smoking behavior and thus help in establishing efficient ways of reducing or ending this practice.

These models have over time faced several critics mainly due to their narrow focus on some behavior outcome such as smoking cessation. The models have also been blamed for, not including some features that are considered to have strong behavior influence such as race, socio-economic status and gender. Regardless, the models are still relevant in explaining various types of behaviors (Corcoran, 2007).

Discuss the possible effects of potential conflicts with local industry on health promotion.

An international treaty that was referred to as ‘The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control’ was the first ever and was introduced by the World Health Organization. The agreement aimed to provide a blueprint to stop and control tobacco advertising, smuggling and introduction of plain tobacco product packages. The most important was mainly to protect health policies from the influential tobacco industries (Carr, 2004).

With millions of the tobacco users perishing due to tobacco-related illnesses, it is very critical for this tobacco industry to keep on creating new smokers. The number of smokers is now more than one billion globally, and the number keeps on rising (MacDonald, 2009). A research shows that more than 5.4 million people perish each year due to tobacco-related illnesses. Most of the tobacco industry document's can now be assessed by the public for legal purposes. A closer analyses to this documented showed that most of this tobacco industries have been acting behind the scene so as to undermine health policies aimed at health promotion (Babayan, 2010).

In most instances the tobacco industries have been lobbying against any health department proposal to lower the smoking rates, regulations aimed at reducing fires resulting from cigarettes, international guidelines that are formulated to shield health policy makers from the influential tobacco industry. They have also through various tactics established themselves as corporate leaders supporting social responsibility so as to be viewed as genuine supporters of health policies (Babayan, 2010).

All these goals have been achieved by these companies through the use of various techniques such as misrepresenting the conclusions drawn from scientific reports and also on the legal advice, use organized groups that seem to be independent of nature as a mouthpiece for their milestone own tobacco interest, lobbying to make it a requirement for the health policy makers to first consult with the tobacco companies before formulating or implementing health policies with respect to tobacco, lobbying political policy makers for their own self-regulation and finally pressing to have the right to participate in development of tobacco control policies.

These have been a major cause for existing conflicts between the health promotion and the tobacco industry for a considerable period. As a result a sound policy should be implemented to control the influence of these industries. This would be a significant step towards a healthier and a sustainable future generation (Downie, Tannahill & Tannahill, 1996).

The importance of providing relevant health-related information to the public

Information play a very vital role in preventing diseases both at the community and individual level. Enough information has outcomes that have both direct and indirect results. Some of the immediate results are improvement in the knowledge on matters concerning health and also understanding (Donatelle, 2009).

Heath information is an integral and a necessary part of public health care. Relevant health information should be reliable. This means that they should be based on evidence, and also be unbiased and up-to-date. They also clearly indicate the responsible authority and the institution involved for its funding. Public health information should be comparative in nature and presenting both the harms and advantages of various remedies. This will play an important role in educating the general public and therefore leading to general health improvement.The information presented to the public has both long term and short term effect. Some of the immediate outcome includes the improved knowledge and understanding of matters concerning health.

Basic health information consists of simple models explaining how human models function, ways to preventing major public diseases, and various ways that can be used to maintain a good healthy life. A firm background on some basic concepts of benefit, harm balance, symptoms and etiology are essential in empowering the public so that they can take up the responsibility of looking after their health. It is a way of promoting self-care.

Plan a health promotion campaign to meet specific objectives

Health promotion campaign: ‘Quit Smoking Challenge.

This promotion is aimed to the large number of youth who are involved in smoking. A study showed that if a person can be able to abstain from cigarette smoking for a period of at least 28 days then he or she has the ability of permanently stopping smoking 5 times faster (Carr, 2004). As a result, the promotion campaign will involve mobilizing the youth towards a 30 days seminar. The workshop will be hosted by experienced experts and also those people who were once cigarette smokers. They will be involved in the provision of motivational testimonies.During the period of the seminar, participants will be challenged to avoid smoking for the next thirty days. However, they will still be assisted by the relevant professionals through various programs such as smoking cessation.

The management is going to be composed of a majority of the youth. This is because youths will have a better understanding of the various issues young smoking addicts are experiencing. Most of the advertisement will be done through social media such as Facebook, shirt printing and posters. This is to influence the public both old and young towards a typical course of helping the young generation.

The financing will be done through the contribution of the participant and selling of shirts to the members of the public. The proceedings will be used to cater for breakfast snacks and the lunchtime meal. Those participants leaving in far regions will still be followed by occasional mailing.

Explain how the health promotion campaign supports health promotion strategies

Health promotion does play a significant role in helping various health promotion strategies to be actually implemented in the public domain. They act as catalyst or agents towards the achieving of set goals and objectives. For instance, a promotion campaign aimed at reducing tobacco abuse will have an enormous result to set strategies by relevant authorities aimed at controlling harmful diseases associated with smoking (Davies & Macdowall, 2006).

References
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