Public Health Policies and Interventions: Effects on People’s Daily Life
Public health issues have become more numerous, with emergent threats posing new challenges. Therefore, timely public health policies have a crucial role in preventing an epidemic from happening in a community. Health policies and interventions aimed at addressing public health concerns have a clearly positive effect on people’s lives, education being one of the main outcomes of the actions taken by nurses. Due to the focus on the dialogue between nursing experts and target populations, people receive an opportunity to develop awareness about basic health issues, skills for managing their key health needs, and knowledge needed to locate a threat to their well-being. Thus, the effects that public health policies have on people’s daily lives is evident and clearly beneficial to the target population.
Another crucial aspect of change that public health interventions entail concerns the increase in the frequency and quality of the nurse-patient dialogue. The management of patients’ needs has become increasingly challenging in the modern healthcare setting due to the rise in nurse shortage and the increase in the number of patients and the extent of their diversity. However, the introduction of interventions in the public health context allows producing changes aimed at revisiting current nursing problems, including the issue of nurse workplace burnouts and the promotion of communication with patients (Gotschi, Garrard, & Giles-Corti, 2016).
As a result, innovative solutions help to make the conversation more productive and ensure that there is a mutual understanding between a nurse and a patient. Specifically, it is imperative that a nurse fully recognizes culture-specific needs of the target community, whereas its members are aware of the means of communicating with healthcare professionals.
Similarly, interventions used by nurses in the context of public health allow counteracting some of the current health concerns, including those that are especially characteristic of a particular environment. Public health interventions help to increase the levels of longevity among citizens, reducing the impact that negative factors produce on their health (Blue, Shove, Carmona, & Kelly, 2016). In addition, interventions allow locating and mitigating the negative effects of social, economic, and financial factors on citizens. The described outcome of public health interventions concerns the management of the needs of disadvantaged and economically struggling communities (Gotschi et al., 2016).
In addition, positive effects may include a change in people’s habits toward more positive ones. Overall, once nurses and health policymakers are aware of the needs of their target demographic and the factors to which they are exposed as patients, the outcomes of public health interventions on everyday lives of citizens can be viewed as positive.
Examples of Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Prevention
Addressing a health threat before it reaches the scale of a major public health concern is one of the crucial tasks of a public health nurse. However, the process of managing health risks is complex and multifaceted, requiring several steps. For this purpose, the phenomena of primary, secondary, and tertiary preventions exist in the modern nursing context. When considering the examples of the three types of prevention mentioned above, one may take a glance at the stages of health issue progression within a community.
The primary prevention represents the stage at which a threat remains comparatively vague and has not affected a vast number of citizens. Thus, the primary prevention measures are typically limited to building awareness in the community and promoting health literacy among its members, paying special attention to those that are particularly vulnerable to the threat (Revello et al., 2015). An educational public health program aimed at increasing health literacy about the problem of asthma and reducing smoking rates can be deemed as an example of the primary prevention steps.
However, in case spreading awareness does not yield the needed results, the secondary prevention measures will be required. The identified measure is used when a disease starts progressing within a community, yet has not reached drastic levels yet. The methods of mitigating the problem and curbing the rates of its development can be seen as the essential aspects of the secondary prevention stage (Mirghani, Jung, & Fakhry, 2017).
In the instance of asthma, the secondary stage involves the active dialogue between a nurse and a community, with detailed instructions about the nature of the disease and the factors that may cause an asthma attack. Listing key allergens and providing patients with access to necessary health management tools such as inhalers should be the focus of secondary prevention in the case under analysis.
The tertiary prevention process in public health management, in turn, includes the strategies for reducing the effects that a particular health issue has produced on the community. In the instance of asthma, the tertiary stage will involve communication with nurses, active support of patients, and the promotion of support for patients within the community (Fernandez, Gold, Hirsch, & Miller, 2015). Recommendations for further health management, prevention of asthma among the rest of the community, and the management of the needs of people with asthma should be the focus of a tertiary intervention aimed at reducing the effects of the described disorder.
References
Blue, S., Shove, E., Carmona, C., & Kelly, M. P. (2016). Theories of practice and public health: Understanding (un)healthy practices. Critical Public Health, 26(1), 36-50. Web.
Fernandez, M. A., Gold, D. C., Hirsch, E., & Miller, S. P. (2015). From the clinics to the classrooms: A review of teacher-child interaction training in primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention settings. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 22(2), 217-229. Web.
Gotschi, T., Garrard, J., & Giles-Corti, B. (2016). Cycling as a part of daily life: A review of health perspectives. Transport Reviews, 36(1), 45-71. Web.
Mirghani, H., Jung, A. C., & Fakhry, C. (2017). Primary, secondary and tertiary prevention of human papillomavirus-driven head and neck cancers. European Journal of Cancer, 78, 105-115. Web.
Revello, M. G., Tibaldi, C., Masuelli, G., Frisina, V., Sacchi, A., Furione, M.,… Gerna, G. (2015). Prevention of primary cytomegalovirus infection in pregnancy. EBioMedicine, 2(9), 1205-1210. Web.