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1. In this course, we have focused on approaches that focus on the “higher levels” of the social-ecological model (organization, community, policy). What are two benefits of focusing public health practice on the higher levels versus the individual/interpersonal levels?

a. Please include specific examples to support each of the two benefits that you identify.

Community interventions and medical policies that cover higher levels, significantly contribute to minimizing the burden of poor health in the society as it covers an enormous number. For instance, community health nursing covers both the person and the entire family hence promoting good health. Through community nursing, it is easier to identify genetic disorders than it would be if the diagnosis and treatment got done at the individual level. After identification, proper treatment or preventive measure can get prescribed for the family, and even for the unborn children so as to treat or minimize the impact of the disorder. The general practitioner can also observe family interactions and risk factors that can be the cause if the disease. Ockene, et al., (2007), states that public health threats get addressed and prevented best from a community and multi-level perspective, through the media and increasing collaborations in the health systems.

Public health at higher levels is not only cheap but also encourages public participation hence improving the quality and state of health care. For example, community vaccination against a disease covers a wider number of individuals at a lower cost but delivers a great outcome as more people get vaccinated. Public health care at higher levels involves targeting communities with a similar factor such as geographic region, race, gender, or a particular health condition, and this makes it easier to manage using few resources in a short time framework. The media has also played a significant role in educating and mobilizing a large number of people regarding a certain public health concert at a low cost and within a short time.

2. Which one of the following approaches do you think should be the highest priority for public health practice? B. Community-Based Prevention C. Media Advocacy D. Prevention Policy & Legislative Advocacy E. Addressing Corporate Practices Explain and justify your choice, including responses to the following.

a. How does this approach contribute to public health practice?

b. Why is it more important/effective than the other approaches?

c. Why is it well-suited to an ecological perspective?

Media Advocacy

Media advocacy gets defined as a kind of public health communication that entails the use of various media for different purposes in the health sector. These purposes include communication of public health issues and measures, shape people’s opinion, mobilization of society’s activists and influencing decision makers on legal and public health policies. Media advocacy is a powerful tool for addressing numerous public health issues and threats more than community-Based Prevention, Prevention Policy, and Legislative Advocacy and addressing Corporate Practices. Media advocacy entails the multi-levels of public healthcare interventions that are individual, organization, network and society levels. It involves the prevention, treatment, and management of public health concerns.

Media applies different strategies to improve public health practice. One of the common techniques is through mass media (television, radio, internet, print publications and films) to disseminate information to the public (Edberg, 2007). Communication campaigns for public health practices such as campaigns against drug and substance abuse and best practices to promote public health that get communicated through public media influence people’s behaviors. Mass media may also get used to gain public support regarding a particular public health policy hence influencing the decision makers. The internet is also a vital tool for providing information concerning a public health issue as well as creating awareness. Technological advancement has also enabled easier interactions between the patient and the physician, such as tethered patient portals that allow communications between healthcare providers and the patient. These tethered patient portals enhance chronic disorder management, patient-health provider communication, patient’s compliance with medications and preventive services, and patient satisfaction (Otte-Trojel, et. al. 2014). The media also includes campaign programs such as the Truth campaign, campaign against HIV/AIDS, and National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign that promote public health through messages and campaign activities targeting the youth and parents. Media advocacy is also effective because, unlike the objective of addressing corporate practices that focus on a specific group, media advocacy reaches all individuals whether affected or not affected by the issue. Unlike prevention policy and legislative policy, media advocacy also covers o treatment and diagnosis of the public health issue.

Media advocacy is important and effective in the public health sector due to various reasons. Media advocacy can reach a broad audience in limited time. This audience includes decision makers, and individuals in remote areas that do not have access to a health facility, areas with poor infrastructure as well as areas hit by disasters such as floods. Media advocacy is effective since information always disseminated has a greater credibility than information presented through paid media advertisements. Media advocacy is also important since it is less costly. Media advocacy is one among the few public health interventions in which focus gets directed upstream to influence the environment in which individuals make various healthcare decisions. It gets used to accelerate and amplify the policy work so as to achieve the public health objectives for a safe and healthy environment in an informed and quick manner. Rowitz (2002), states that when media advocacy is community-based its most effective and entails collaborative measures at framing concerns, defining agendas, and monitoring the effectiveness of policy proposals.

Media advocacy in public health is well suited to an ecological perspective since it blends communications, politics, research and advocacy in achieving public health objectives (Dorfman & Krasnow, 2014).

3. Briefly, discuss which one of the approaches you think would be your preferred focus if you choose a career in public health. Some questions to consider:

a. Which one of the approaches do you feel best matches your personal strengths and weaknesses?

b. Which one do you feel is most aligned with the public health issues you are interested?

c. In what way do you anticipate that you would be involved in this approach?

Media advocacy
If I chose a career in public health, I would select media advocacy since by using the approach I would be able to reach a broad audience as well as influence public health policies. Through the use of creative writing which is one among my personal strengths, I would significantly make an impact in the public health sector. My publications and articles would emphasize on preventive and proper health habits, hence result in decreased health issues. I would also use research to identify emerging health threats and warn people in advance hence mitigate the impact of the risk or eliminate the problem.

Media advocacy is the most aligned with the public health issues of interest. For instance, most diseases are as a result of lack of information of certain avoidable actions. For example, diseases caused by poor dietary or tobacco and alcohol abuse or poor sanitation could easily get avoided and minimized if the community gets sensitized to the effects of these activities. Other diseases such as polio that can get prevented through immunization can get avoided if the society gets sensitized to the importance of vaccination of children at an early age. My aim in these activities would be to make the world a better place where diseases get prevented more that they get treated.

As an activist in public health sector, I would get involved in creative writing to sensitize people on certain components of public health. These components include effects of drug and substance abuse, the importance of maintaining a clean environment, proper hygiene, and public health. I would also get involved in organizing community support for the change in public health policies. I would also make publications regarding the current government policies regarding public health, the newest research regarding diseases and the effective prevention measures and also changes in the trend of the illnesses.

Gross domestic product encompasses the monetary value of all the goods and services that have attained completion, produced within the borders of a certain country and additionally should be within a defined timeline. The elements that make GDP distinctive is the fact that it encompasses all the public as well as private consumption, investments, government outlays as well as the exports, ignoring the imports that are occurring with the defined territory. In a nutshell, GPP presents a broad assessment of a country’s general economic activity (Higgs, 2015).

The HDI is a tool that the UN developed to assist in the assessment and consequently rank the levels of social as well as economic development in different countries through the application of the four set criteria. These include life expectancy at birth, the average years of schooling, and the expected number of schooling years as well as the gross national income per capita. Through the HDI, it is possible to track the variations in development levels over a certain course of time and additionally to offer comparison for the developments that are occurring in different countries. The creation of the HDI was meant to serve the objective of emphasizing that people along with their abilities need to be the decisive criteria for the assessment of the developments that are taking place in a country and not just the economic growth (Darvishan & Hakimzadeh, 2015). HDI are also applicable to the assessment of the national policy choices by asking the manner in which two countries that have a similar level of GNI per capita are ending up with dissimilar human development outcomes. These dissimilarities are applied in developing debates on the policy priorities by a government.

Inclusive wealth entails a monetary measure that is made if the summation of the natural, physical as well as the human assets. The natural capital encompasses the forests, land, fossil fuels as well as the minerals. The human capital is in reference to the population’s skills and education. The physical which represents the manufactured products encompass things as buildings, machinery as well as infrastructure. The reference point of the IWR is the fact that the productive base of a nation is dependent on the human capital, manufactured capital as well as the natural capital (Polasky, et al., 2015). The assessment of the human along with the natural produced capital that encompass the components of inclusive wealth provide a broader as well as a more comprehensive assessment of the performance of a country’s economy. Through the reliance on IWR as the economic measurement tool, countries will enjoy an innovative yardstick that will be offering them a new perspective relating to their economic performance in the recent decades. The measurement is better that the traditionally applied GDP in offering a reflection of the sustainable development of nations.

There are various attribute that make GDP a poor measure of a country’s economic progress. These challenges demerits include: GDP does not take into account the measurements of the quality of life in country. The quality is applied in the evaluation of the general wellbeing of individuals as well as societies in that it is wrong to confuse the quality of live with standards of living which relies on the primary income. Quality of life entails employment, wealth, physical as well as mental health and education among others Higgs, 2015). The fact that GDP fails to take the quality of life into consideration during its measurements makes it s limited measure of a nation’s progress. GDP ignores the impact that the informal markets have on an economy. It fails to address the activities of the black market where the money that is spent does not get regulated. The failure to comprehensively address the informal markets thus makes GDP a limited measure of economic progress of a nation. The fact that GDP has the tendency of overestimating the negative externalities which are the bad effects that third parties suffer following the production or consumption of a good or service makes it poor measures of economic progress. Whenever there is an increase in the GDP, there is also a concurrent increase in the adversarial externalities such as water and air pollution (Higgs, 2015). As GDP overestimates the negative externalities, it consequently limits it as a criteria for examining the welfare that between different countries.

Another measure that applies to assessing the progress of a nation is the genuine progress indicator (GPI). The advantages that come with GPI is the fact that it assists the policy makers to assess the well their citizen are doing both socially and economically (Hayashi, 2015). Human development index as an additional measure assesses the progress of a nation in three dimensions of human development. These include a healthy and long life attributed to the life expectancy at birth, knowledge attributed to the school enrollment rates and literacy levels as well as decent living standards seen via the GDP per capita. The ecological footprint as the additional measure assesses quantity of land as well as waters area that a human populations needs to be able to produce the resources they consume as well as to absorb its water via the available technologies.