Health management has recently gained particularly strong weight as an issue to be addressed within the global community. As the Healthy people 2030 agenda has been established, global public health concerns such as improvements in the management of CVD, reduction in the levels of childhood obesity, and the related concerns (“How Has Healthy People Changed?”). Moreover, the massive global disaster that the pandemic of COVID-19 represents has indicated that there are large gaps in the general audience’s health literacy (Xu et al. 2). Mapping of Health Literacy and Social Panic Via Web Search Data During the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency: Infodemiological Study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 22(7), e18831.). The described discovery adds to the urgency of introducing people to the notion of healthy living as the process of maintaining one’s health and using adequate resources for supporting it. By promoting patient education and making healthcare services accessible to all citizens, including vulnerable groups, one will be able to encourage a rise in the levels of healthy living.
The significance of providing extended access to healthcare services for vulnerable groups gained additional weight over the past decade after essential discoveries about the specifics of diseases and disorders’ development had been made. The significance of the described task has been amplified with the development of new health concerns, particularly, the emergence of COVID-19. As the statistical data recorded lately has shown, people worldwide lack proper health education desperately since they fail to comply with basic safety standards due to the lack of understanding of their importance.
In turn, the promotion of health literacy by building awareness and offering people access to the required resources will allow improving the current system of disease prevention. Once vulnerable groups are aware of the key symptoms of specific diseases and disorders, as well as the risk factors that may cause the development of certain health issues, they will be less likely to develop said diseases (Ayaz‐Alkaya et al. 5). The importance of health literacy as the ability to identify symptoms of a disease or disorder at an early stage and address a healthcare expert has been explicitly addressed in the paper by Carels et al. (78). With an increase in the agency of patients and their independence in health-related decision making based on the development of new knowledge and abilities, an improvement in health issues will be observed.
Finally, the limitations of the current perspective of healthy living need to be addressed in order to provide vulnerable groups with an opportunity to improve their health status. Since healthy living standards hinge significantly on the dieting choices, the opportunity to be physically active, and other changes that are unavailable to people belonging to the lower class, opportunities for improving the health status o disadvantaged populations will have to be south. Specifically, the focus on counseling and the provision of health support to the identified population groups will be needed. Thus, the extent of health awareness and literacy will rise.
The role of nurse educators as leaders and the elements of patients’ support system must not to be underestimated, either. Since the development of health literacy depends not only on the availability of necessary materials but also on the skill of understanding them, the support of a nurse educator will be required. Therefore, to address the current health concerns, namely, the lack of health literacy and the persistence of health myths, nurse will have to assume the functions of educators and utilize social media and other tools, including traditional ones, to spread vital information. By shifting the focus toward the promotion of awareness building and the increase in health literacy among vulnerable populations, one will be able to increase the rates of healthy living both on local and global scales. Since the concept of healthy living is comparatively
Works Cited
Ayaz‐Alkaya, Sultan, et al. “A Healthy Lifestyle Education Programme for Health Literacy and Health‐Promoting Behaviours: A Pre‐Implementation and Post‐Implementation Study.” International Journal of Nursing Practice, vol. 26, no. 2, 2020, pp. 1-12.
Carels, Robert A., et al. “A Novel Stepped-Care Approach to Weight Loss: The Role of Self-Monitoring and Health Literacy in Treatment Outcomes.” Eating Behaviors, vol. 26, 2017, pp. 76-82.
“How Has Healthy People Changed?” Health.gov, 2020, Web.
Xu, Chenjie, Xinyu Zhang, and Yaogang Wang. “Mapping of Health Literacy and Social Panic Via Web Search Data During the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency: Infodemiological Study.” Journal of Medical Internet Research, vol. 22, no. 7, 2020, pp. 1-9.