Empowerment And Public Health - Food Democracy - Essay Writing Assessment Answer

Empowerment And Public Health Assignment

Essay Writing Assessment

Compare and contrast an example of food democracy with a large supermarket. In your essay you need to examine both the nature of “food” and “democracy” in your chosen environments. Address the following questions in your essay;

What do you notice about the fundamentals of “democracy” in your chosen example of food democracy?

Compare and contrast each example;

• What do you notice in each site?
• What stands out in terms of “food” and “democracy” and its’ principles in each example.
• Use food democracy as a lens to examine how consumers are given choice or invited to participate, or not as the case may be, in each example

Practitioners need to recognise that an empowering public health practice is a political activity’ (Laverack 2009:75)

What does Laverack mean by this? Your assignment should:

• Explain what empowering public health practice is
• Demonstrate an understanding of political activity in the context of empowering communities
• Analyse the role of the public health practitioner
• Consider the relevance of this statement to taking action on the social determinants of health.

In addition your assignment should:

• provide a lucid introduction
• show an advanced understanding of the key issues
• show the ability to interpret relevant information and literature in relation to these questions.
• demonstrate a capacity to explain and apply relevant theory
• show evidence of reading beyond the core and recommended reading
• justify any conclusions reached with well-formed arguments not merely assertion
• comply with normal academic standards of legibility, referencing and bibliographical details
• be written clearly with accurate spelling, grammar and sentence and paragraph construction.

Empowerment and Public Health Practices

Introduction

Empowering public health practices involve several things such as educating the patients on health care issues, involving the public or the community in health care practices and empowering the practitioners by providing effective health services to the patients. Therefore, Carter et al. (2011) say that empowering public health practices are all about incorporating all the stakeholders in the health care sector into understanding the dangers of poor health conditions and the benefits of effective health care services. Every stakeholder (doctors, nurses, and pharmacists, drug producing companies, patients, community and the government) needs to change their reasoning and understanding of the health, and what it means to everyone. According to Minkler & Wallerstein (2011), health hazards causes up to 90% of the total health in the world while other causes are caused by other things such as accidents, assassinations, bad climate, and earth conditions among others. Therefore, this paper is going to examine in details the theories, principles, and the roles of every one responsible for empowering public health practices.

Background Information on Empowering Health Practices

Empowering of public health practices begins from enhancing the entire community to participating in providing efficient health care services to themselves and people around them requiring efficient health attention. It is then followed by the strong and full participation of the government into the public health care sector. Potvin & Jones (2011), observe that the government needs to put across measures, policies, and effective regulation that will result in empowering the public health practices. It also needs to ensure that all the necessary basic and other essential services are effectively and efficiently availed in the right quantity, quality, and at the right time. The government and the communities are the pillars or the building blocks of empowering the public health practices. This is because the government is the one which provides the necessary facilities and resources required for effective and efficient health care practices. According to Engel & Susilo (2014), the community on the other hand is the one that posses the health care hazards or bad conditions in the health care environment, and is the ones closer to people suffering from several health care diseases and conditions.

The nurses, doctors, pharmacists and other health care practitioners are the ones who are responsible for effective health care services and ensuring that the community leaves a healthy life. The nurse needs to understand the principles and the theories of effective empowerment of the public health care practices. Here et al. (2015) say that it is necessary and essential that the health care practitioners understand the heath care ethical principles, and other ethics apply accordingly. The patients are the most essential and dangerous people in the health care sector. This is because they are the ones that require health care attention from all other stakeholders in the sector, and at the same time protect themselves. Therefore, Frumkin et al. (2012) say that all these stakeholders require sufficient information, ideas, and resources to fully participate into providing effective health care practices in their environment. Empowerment of public health care practices needs to be applied because health care hazards kill over 90% of the total world population, and thus the reason why the public health practices need to be empowered.

Political Activities in Empowering Communities

As said earlier, empowerment of the community is the one which will greatly reduce effects of poor health conditions. There are several political activities that can be involved in empowering the health care sector through the community participation. McHenry (2011) says that they range from educating the community people on effective health care practices, organising for rallies and campaigns around the community to create awareness on the importance and need for empowerment of the public health practices, selection of representatives in every community or society to administer public health care practices empowerment and involving the public in decision-making about empowerment of the public health practices. According to Slade et al. (2014), all these activities have to be done in a steady and planned manner so as to efficiently utilise the available resources in ensuring that the empowerments of public health care practices are conducted effectively. The community also needs to be made to understand the health care sector and change their thinking and be reasonable about health. Every community member needs to be concerned about health.

The political phenomenon or the government should initiate public programs to train all the people in all the communities on public health care practices. They need to make the public understand that they have lost their loved ones, their family members, their friends, and their role models through poor health conditions and hazards. According to Wiggins (2015), they also need to be informed that poor health conditions around them make them spend more in terms of money and time in curing those with health diseases and in bad conditions. Therefore, they need to be educated of being responsible and keeping their health environment clean through practising effective health practices. The community has to be involved in public health practices empowerment by participating in decision-making. Davies & Kelly (2014) say that after providing effective education to the community on effective health practices and application of necessary principles and theories, they need to involve them in heath care sector board meetings. Here, they have to give the community enough chance and time to provide their views on empowerment of public health practices and apply those views on the measures taken.

The community also has to be made aware of the importance of empowerment of the public health practices. Therefore, the leaders both in the health care sector and the political leaders of the nation need to come together and organise effective and reasonable rallies on creating awareness. McAllister, MHN, & Lowe (2011) say that these rallies have to be arranged in a manner that every community person gets access to them, and here’s what they have to say on empowerment of the public health practices. They need to inform the public on why the public needs to have the right and mandate to have effective health practices. This will be only effective if they select health care representatives across all parts of the community to be given enough training and mandate for efficient health practices. Pulvirenti, McMillan, & Lawn (2014) say that these representatives will be there to receive health complaints from the public and forward them to the necessary authorities for action. They will also be required to make follow out over those complains in order to ensure that they are addressed on time and effectively.

Role of the Public Health Practitioners

Health practitioners are the people responsible for providing health care services to the community and more so to the patients. In every community, there will never lack people who require medical or health care services and others even strongly depends on these services for their survival. Thus, these include the nurses, the health care public officers, the doctors, pharmacists, and the clinical officers. Sørensen et al. (2012) say that they are the trained professionals in the health care field that examines the community and are able to provide the necessary health attention to them. They have the necessary skills, knowledge, and experience required of them to effectively and efficiently perform health care services. The role of the practitioners in the health care sector is wide and greatly lead to the promotion of the health care industry. The practitioners perform the role of consultants to the community on health care matters (Brett et al., 2014). They also provide great advice to the community and the patients on how they should conduct themselves health wise or which things they need to do or not do to fall ill again for their own good.

The practitioners need to provide clinical services to the patients from the community that requires medical attention. Jenkinson et al. (2013) say that practitioners, especially the nurses will apply their skills and knowledge to help the sick people recover from their condition. This is the major role of the practitioners in health care services to the public. It is because it saves lives of so many people in the hospitals, dispensaries, and clinics. It is also the section of the practitioners where they have been professionally trained, and they can provide effective health care services to the people. According to Connell (2012), the practitioners also perform the role of the source of health information to the public. They will always be involved in any health care issues where they provide the necessary advice to the public on how best they need to keep their surrounding environment. All these functions of the practitioner mean that they have to provide direct assistance to the community, and the one in contact with the public. Therefore, they have a wide range of roles to perform thus being essential to be empowered in order to effectively provide health care attention to the public.

Necessary Action on Social Determinants of Health

Empowering of the public health practices means a lot to the social determinants of health. In this case, the social determinants of health are the community which forms the public. In turn, the public has the patients requiring medical health. However, there are people who do not require health services form practitioners but require health care knowledge and understanding. The public is the one which carries the ignorant people to their well being and that of others around them. Therefore, Stiggelbout et al. (2012) observe, they pollutes the environment with factories and industries. In turn, this will pose a health hazard to them and other sick people around them as they might use some non-biodegradable materials which act as breading sites for mosquitoes; also there are effects of global warming. As a result, they are supposed to be informed of their harmful activities and others around them. By making them understand the essence of good health environment, they shall see the sense of being empowered to protect their health through effective measures (Kemppainen, Tossavainen, & Turunen, 2013; Iedema, Mesman, & Carroll, 2013). Thus, this will show that the government appreciates the well being of the public and thus they will empower themselves.

The social determinants of health also need to put in more effort to their studies so as to be literate and be able to see the sense of a good health practice and the environment. They also need to take care of the practitioners around them who give them the necessary health care attention. They need to appreciate the effort put in by the political sector such as resources and support of campaigns and rallies towards empowerment of public health practices. According to Jagosh et al. (2012), the social determinant is also the one with the patients who requires health care services from the practitioners. It is the responsibility of each and every patient to ensure that he is trying as much as possible to adhere to the doctors and nurses vices. This is to ensure that they recover from the illness they are suffering from, they should also ensure that they are avoiding some activities and mistakes that would lead them worsening of the illness condition they are suffering from.

Conclusion

In summary, empowerment of the public health practices involves the application of the necessary principles and theories in the health care sector to integrate all the stakeholders in the sector into effective health care practices. Furthermore, the stakeholders include the doctors, nurses, patients, pharmacists, the public or community, the government, and medicine producing companies. Every stakeholder needs to be empowered to effectively perform his role in the health care sector. The public is the one which needs to be empowered by the political activities in several ways. These ways include creating awareness to the public on health care through rallies and campaigns, providing educational needs to public on effective care control, choosing representatives for health care in society and involving them in health care decision-making. Therefore, effective adherence to principles and theories in health care sector will result in the effective empowerment of the public health care sector.