Introduction
The correlation between one’s environment and health conditions has become more vivid than previously due to an increasing variety of social issues that tackle one’s state over the past decades. To conduct a proper assessment of national health as a notion, the concept of public health was introduced, being connected with the environmental factors that could potentially impact the individuals’ lives (Den Broeder et al., 2018). However, even when this notion has gained its recognition worldwide, public health efficiency is now questionable due to both authority’s and citizens’ ambiguous attitudes towards the issues. The rapidly increasing number of policies now introduced to public health management fails to meet the expected results, as stakeholders lack determination in terms of the problem. Hence, the primary purpose of the following paper is to closely examine and suggest a possible solution to one of the most challenging global issues today – climate change.
Issue Description
Climate change is, by all means, one of the most severe human-made natural phenomena the world had faced over the past centuries. However, whereas the blame is put on human activity, and the most significant victim in the case is the environment itself, it is of crucial importance to focus on how climate change affects human beings as well. According to the American Public Health Association (APHA), climate change is one of the most dangerous challenges humanity faces today due to several precedents, including:
- Extreme weather patterns;
- Air pollution;
- Food insecurity;
- Vector-borne diseases rate increase;
- Raising waters;
- Expanding social gap within a state (APHA, n.d.).
While the issue is quite prevalent in the United States, creating a major discrepancy in healthcare access in the first place, the whole world is almost equally affected by the implications of climate change. Hence, it is of crucial importance to estimate the policies now existing within the US aimed at reducing the scope of this impact.
Existing Policies and Intervention
Speaking of the population affected the most, it is barely possible to estimate the one that struggles with climate change the most due to the fact that its causal link leads to a variety of effects, specifically for a certain social group. Thus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicates that the most widespread effects of extreme weather conditions include:
- Heat stress;
- Vector-, food-, and water-borne diseases;
- Injuries;
- Economic disruption;
- Poor nutrition, hunger;
- An increasing rate of respiratory diseases such as COPD, asthma, bronchitis (CDC, 2019).
One of the major governmentally-based public health policies considering climate change is the CDC’s BRACE (Building Resilience Against Climate Effects) framework aimed at addressing the aforementioned outcomes (CDC, 2019). The framework consists of five steps concerning anticipation of the effects, disease burden projection, public health intervention evaluation, health adaptation plan implementation, and quality assessment and control.
The following public health policy has now been introduced to the vast majority of the US authorities in order to secure efficient medical intervention in the process. However, the measurable outcome of the policy does not respond to the initial expectations due to the lack of actual interventions in the process. In fact, it has been estimated that the state’s expenses on healthcare are steadily increasing over the past two decades, implying the improvement of public health promotion (Dieleman et al., 2016). Nevertheless, personal healthcare has always been a priority, leaving behind such alarming issues as climate change and human inequity in terms of healthcare access.
Suggestions on Policy Improvement
It goes without saying that the climate change that has now been severely affecting human health is a result of those humans’ impulsive and inappropriate actions in the first place. However, some of the major expectations in terms of public healthcare on climate change are placed on the state leaders who need to define algorithms on combating the issue’s disastrous effects. Thus, it might be proposed that the best way to improve these policies’ efficiency would be to secure active citizen participation in the process.
One of the best ways to achieve this is to establish a proper dialogue between the US citizens, and the governors who have the authority to introduce the policies (Binns and Low, 2019). Moreover, the major issue lies in the fact that non-governmental organizations addressing climate change and public health are unwilling to collaborate with authorities, as they believe them to have no genuine interest in the problem. Although it might be true, more people are struggling with climate change effects every day, leaving no minute to waste on ideological arguments. Instead, both sides are to cooperate by reaching a consensus in terms of resources and agenda so that the issue would be battled on the shortest notice.
Taking everything into consideration, it might be concluded that despite immense attention paid to the issue of climate change effects on climate change, the issue would still be relevant for a long time from now due to its scope. A series of seemingly efficient policies have now been introduced to the broad audience bearing the right ideology yet lack measurable results. Hence, it is one’s public duty to collaborate with fellow residents and authorities in order to secure an appropriate healthcare agenda.
References
APHA. (n.d.). Health & climate resource guide. Web.
Binns, C., & Low, W. Y. (2019). Time to get on with it: climate change needs public health action now.
CDC. (2019). CDC policy. Web.
CDC. (2019). CDC’s building resilience against climate affects (BRACE) framework. Web.
Den Broeder, L., Devilee, J., Van Oers, H., Schuit, A. J., & Wagemakers, A. (2018). Citizen science for public health. Health promotion international, 33(3), 505-514.
Dieleman, J. L., Baral, R., Birger, M., Bui, A. L., Bulchis, A., Chapin, A.,… & Lavado, R. (2016). US spending on personal health care and public health, 1996-2013. Jama, 316(24), 2627-2646.