Introduction
Maintenance and promotion of good health has become a major concern. Public healthcare administration is the science of preventing, improving and promoting health of the community at large. In efforts to enhance this, public healthcare administrators have encountered a number of challenges which have hindered the propagation of better healthcare in the society. This essay is a brief explanation on why the issue of community measures of sanitation, inspection, and public health nursing has become the most problematic in public healthcare.
Major Problems in Public Health
As mentioned earlier, there are a number of challenges that have faced public healthcare management but the three major challenges include:
- Community measures of sanitation, inspection, and public health nursing. The environment that we are living in is widely polluted thus there is need to tackle complex health issues in efforts to reduce, improve and promote good health within the community.
- The second concern is health-care coverage. Disasters occur unexpectedly and it is therefore necessary to plan and prepare for man-made and natural disasters. In cases of emergency, this also ensures that an individual is fully covered by a certain medical insurance coverage. Manmade disasters can be reduced if the right action is taken but natural disasters are hard to control.
- The third problem refers to health inequities and this refers to difference in healthcare coverage. This is mostly common in developing countries where there is no equitable access to healthcare and healthcare facilities. Health inequalities rages from difference in quality of healthcare, access to healthcare or health outcomes based on race, religion, gender or ethnic group. It is therefore upon the government to try and close or minimize this gap.
The Main Challenge
Among the three main challenges, community measures of sanitation, inspection and public health nursing has been the most problematic issue in public health. I strongly believe that this is the root problem and if this problem is solved, the other two problems can eventually reduce. In addition, this problem affects everyone irrespective of class, gender, race, or ethnicity. This is because every individual has a responsibility of taking care of environment to ensure proper sanitation. This means that if one person neglects this, other individuals are affected as well.
I also believe that if the environmental hazards are reduced by ensuring proper sanitation, better inspection and improved health nursing, then manmade disasters such as diarrhea outbreaks can as well be reduced. Better inspection will ensure that people are prepared incases of disaster and it will also help to anticipate future problems and prevent them from occurring.
With proper inspection and better public health nursing, health inequalities can as well reduce since the health administrators have the skills and experience and therefore they will handle all the patients equally without discrimination. Since health professionals are competent they are in a better position to offer quality services to all people (Novick & Marr, 2003).
Roles of Public Health
Prevent disease and injuries by ensuring healthy lifestyles like exercising regularly and better eating habits. They should encourage and promote behaviors that ensure healthy lifestyles. This will ensure that the community stays healthy (International Organization for Migration, 2011).
Assist in Formulating, promoting, and enforcing health policies. Policies should be formulated to regulate health professional and health systems. This will ensure that all health professionals are competent enough to handle health issues. They should also come up with policies that protect the consumer against exploitation by manufactures (International organization for migration, 2011).
They should advocate for quality and low cost services to ensure that everyone has access to these services. This will ensure that the disadvantaged groups faced with problem of health inequalities have access to improved services (Novick & Marr 2003).
Promote and protect a healthy environment. This can be achieved by educating the community on the need to take the right action to ensure that environmental hazards are completely removed. They may come up with educational programs and training programs that may be of great importance to the community at large (America Public Health Association, 2011).
Plan and prepare for natural and man-made disasters. Natural disasters like floods, fire, and earthquake are hard to predict and therefore it is hard to control. Man made disaster on the other hand are able to control if the right measures are taken. Every community should also ensure that they have emergency medical services like an ambulance to respond to emergencies (Novick & Marr, 2003).
Conduct more research towards the identification and anticipation of the community needs. The research mainly helps them to come up with strategies for preventing diseases. This ensures that past disasters, for instance, disease outbreaks will not re-occur. More research will also help in coming up with better and improved healthcare facilities (America Public Health Association, 2011).
Train and ensure a competent public healthcare workforce. This ensures that proper and quality care is taken to all patients regardless of religion, class, race, gender or ethnicity. This has been a major problem in developing countries since healthcare professionals are relatively few compared to the population size (International Organization for Migration, 2011).
Conclusion
Health care is very vital for everyone irrespective of gender, race, ethnicity, religion and class. It is therefore the duty of every individual as well as the government to ensure proper sanitation, inspection and improved public health nursing. This will enhance quality and affordable health care for all and it will also ensure that we are well prepared incase of disasters.
References
America Public Health Association. (2011). Role of public Health Nurses. Alpha Organization. Web.
International Organization for Migration. (2011). Public health concerns. Iom International. Web.
Novick, L., & Marr, J. (2003). Public health issues in disaster preparedness: focus on bioterrorism. New York, NY: Jones & Bartlett Learning.