For this assignment I am going to describe the key aspects of public health strategies

by babyliciouse2294 (student)

LAILA SULEIMAN

UNIT-12

LAILA SULEIMAN

UNIT-12

Introduction

For this assignment I am going to describe the key aspects of public health strategies. The key aspects of health in the UK are: monitoring health status, identifying health needs, developing programmes to reduce risk/screen for disease early on, controlling communicable disease, promoting health and planning and evaluating health provision.

Health status of the community

Public health is concerned with improving the health as well as the well-being of local residents rather than treating diseases. The population in Great Britain is made over 60 million individuals. Incidence of illness and life threatening factors are collected at local level and this information is recorded so that an image of the health of the public can be compared as well as measured throughout GB. Certain areas might have higher incidences of some if the diseases; some communities will reveal low incidences of diseases. The health status of the community is dependent on age, gender, socio-economic conditions, genetics and environmental factors. Public Health specialists work in partnership with other professional groups as well as organisations in and outside the NHS; they monitor the health status of the local community, identify their health needs and they find ways of meeting them. They develop, deliver as well as evaluate programmes which can decrease the population’s possibility of developing certain diseases (e.g. heart diseases, blood diseases and cancers).

Identifying health needs of the population

Identifying the health needs of the residents within a particular community means that the possible effects for services can be identified. Patterns as well as trends can be recognized throughout the entire region by way of gathering general statistics. These statistics are used to control how health can be improved or exactly how parts of concern can be decorated and effects of medical condition reduced or stopped. It is the duty of health professionals to report the incidence of particular diseases as well as illnesses so that the information can be centrally organized ...

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Identifying health needs of the population

Developing programmes to reduce risk and screen for early disease

The purpose of screening is to reduce risks in the population and to identify diseases at early stages to improve patient’s outcome, as a result allowing earlier intervention as well as management to reduce mainly death as well as suffering from a disease. These types of programmes are intended to reduce risks at a population level. The screening programmes are used for different kind of diseases for instance, breast cancer, cervical cancer, bowel cancer, chlamydia, diabetic retinopathy as well as a full range of new and pregnancy screening programmes. There are several types of screening that could be used in different categories. For instance, universal screening involves screening of all individuals in a certain category for instance, all children of a certain age. Case finding involves screening a smaller group of individuals based on the presence of risk factors.

Controlling communicable disease

Communicable disease is an illness that arises from transmission of an infectious agent or its toxic product from an infected person, animal or lake. This could be transmitted either directly or indirectly through an intermediate plant or animal, host or even environment. This kind of disease can easily widespread when there are more individuals suffering from it. Other diseases that are transmitted can also spread when there are more individuals with that illness than what would normally be expected. For that reason, emergency control measures will be needed. Communicable disease happens to become greater after a disaster than in non- emergency situations mainly when large populations have been moved. Communicable diseases do not continuously develop in the same way in disposed hosts. A number of diseases produce more non-clinical cases that experience vague, non-specific symptoms or none at all for instance, TB, cholera, polio etc. therefore the disease will spread around without people knowing that they have it. Other diseases produce more medical cases with obvious symptoms for instance measles. However, once exposed, people with as well as people without clinical 7 biological signs of infection are capable of spreading the disease to other disposed individuals. There are a lot of individuals that do transmit the disease and there are individuals that are at greater risk of becoming ill or dying within the population.

Promoting the health of the population

General practitioners have an important role to play in promoting the health and preventing diseases. General practitioners need to put patients at the centre of their care as well as have appropriate skills to support individuals to self-care, taking them through a variety of methods, in partnership, knowing that the individuals should make the choices, decisions and take the actions themselves. They provide a link concerning individual health care as well as care for the community that includes their patient population.

All of the GPs as well as their primary healthcare teams play a crucial role in promoting health for all ages, being engaged in child health and adult care. Patients are seen by their GP’s on average, four to five times a year. This is just for minor, self-limiting problems. GPs, therefore, have many opportunities to talk over healthy living with the patients and for the early discovery of illnesses.

Planning and evaluating the national provision of the health and social care target setting

Planning and evaluating is essential organisational practice in public health. Planning health care begins with an assessment of need.

This requires information on the:

•Size as well as structure of underlying population

• Areas of met and unmet need

• Incidence and / or prevalence of disease(s) of interest

• Effectiveness of interventions available

• Relative cost-effectiveness of those interventions

• As well as the Current services, including capacity, quality, effectiveness, efficiency

Planning and evaluating is recording exactly how to distribute social services, to make sure that the best results are achieved. Planning and evaluating assesses the provision of basic health services and if they are having enough impact on the problem.

Problems to consider when using information for local health service planning include:

• The national data to the local population and conditions. If only national data are available, when applied locally the data may need to be adjusted for the composition of the population such as age, ethnicity and deprivation.

• Many data sources cannot give any indication of who has the health condition of interest but is not accessing services.

• National or regional data may mask inequalities at smaller geographical levels such as wards.

• Data are subject to random fluctuations. Small area data may have very small numbers. Indicators of precision, such as confidence intervals, should always be used in these cases.