NUR4667 Assignment Public Health Policies

NUR4667 Assignment Public Health Policies

NUR4667 Assignment Public Health Policies

Public Health Policies Intervention in Daily Life

Public health is critical for daily life because it helps to protect communities from diseases by preventing disease outbreaks. Public health is the primary ‘defense force’ that protects communities by stopping the outbreaks and spread of diseases. Besides, public health helps people to lead healthy lives by adopting positive health behaviors (Seymour, 2018 NUR4667 Assignment: Public Health Policies). Some examples of how public health affects my daily life include: preventing and controlling disease outbreaks, the use of family planning, drinking healthy water that is fluoridated, warning against the use of tobacco and excessive drinking of alcohol, and promoting the consumption of safe and healthy foods. 

Public health policies ensure that families are safe from harmful bacteria that contaminate drinking water. For example, people use water to accomplish many personal and domestic tasks such as bathing, brushing of teeth, washing clothes, drinking, and many more. Public health ensures that water used at homes/communities or any water meant for human consumption is treated to rid it of harmful germs from bacteria.

Other aspects of how public policy affects daily life by creating positive policies for food handling. People depend on food to live, however, if not handled well, food can turn into dangerous poison that harms people. Public health has created policies that dictate how food must be handled safely and carefully to avoid contamination that may harm humans/livestock.  NUR4667 Assignment Public Health Policies

Primary Prevention, Secondary Prevention, and Tertiary Prevention for Specific Disease Conditions

Primary prevention refers to intervention before a disease occurs or outbreaks, secondary prevention is intervention and screening of a disease in its earliest outbreak stage. Tertiary prevention/intervention is managing disease after it has been diagnosed. At the primary prevention stage, the major purpose of intervention is to the prevention of a disease or injury before it occurs. In secondary prevention, the aim here is to identify a disease at the earliest opportunity after its effects have been spotted in people (Stewart et al., 2017).

The idea is to identify/diagnose the disease to create an early response/intervention plan to contain the disease from spreading further. At the tertiary prevention level, a disease has already spread through the community, and the objective of intervention changes to soften the impact of an illness or injury. The softening of the impact of a disease is done by helping affected people to manage their conditions to help them to improve their quality of life and the ability to function.  NUR4667 Assignment Public Health Policies

When is each Type of Prevention Appropriate?

Primary Prevention

Primary prevention is applied before a disease or injury has occurred. This means that the objective of primary prevention is to prevent people from exposing themselves to hazards that cause injuries/diseases. For example, unhealthy or unsafe health behaviors expose people to diseases or injuries. To avert such crises, public health warns, educates, and guides people to adopt behaviors that lead to a healthy life while encouraging people to abandon behaviors that pose risk to health. Similar, primary prevention is engaged with disease detection so that diseases are contained before they can affect humans. For example, many diseases have been contained through vaccination. This means that they are contained and cannot pose risk or danger to humans.  NUR4667 Assignment Public Health Policies

Secondary Prevention

At the secondary prevention stage, a disease has already found its way to communities and must be contained. The objective is to have the disease/injury contained at the earliest opportunity possible to avert a crisis. It is easier to contain a disease during its early stages of an outbreak because only a few people are affected/infected at this stage (Karunathilake, & Ganegoda, 2018 NUR4667 Assignment: Public Health Policies).

However, if it is not contained at this stage, there is the risk of bigger impact/damage when many people are infected. When there is a full-blown spread of a disease, it is very difficult to manage because an entire population is at a risk. Based on this analogy, the objective of secondary prevention is to detect a disease/injury and slow down or completely halt its progress at the earliest stage. 

Tertiary Prevention

The most appropriate time to adopt primary prevention is after a disease has affected and spread through communities. At this stage, people are already afflicted and are living with a disease which means the only alternative left is disease management. Tertiary prevention aims at softening the impact of diseases with long-lasting impacts. The best way to soften the impact of a disease is by managing it so that it does not take a toll on the affected person. NUR4667 Assignment Public Health Policies

Some of the disease management strategies used during tertiary prevention include; rehabilitation programs for diseases such as cardiac and stroke problems. For other chronic diseases, there are chronic disease management programs that help affected individuals manage these conditions effectively. The objective of these disease management programs is to help people to improve their quality of life and the ability to function normally. Thus, tertiary prevention aims to try to restore afflicted people to their healthy/normal status. If this is not possible, for example in life-long diseases such as diabetes, then the objective is to help such people effectively manage their conditions.

NUR4667 Assignment: Public Health Policies References

• Karunathilake, S. P., & Ganegoda, G. U. (2018). Secondary Prevention of Cardiovascular Diseases and Application of Technology for Early Diagnosis. BioMed Research International, 2018, 5767864. https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/5767864
• Seymour, J. (2018). The impact of public health awareness campaigns on the awareness and quality of palliative care. Journal of Palliative Medicine, 21(S1), 30-36. https://doi.org/10.1089/jpm.2017.0391
• Stewart, J., Manmathan, G., & Wilkinson, P. (2017). Primary prevention of cardiovascular disease: A review of contemporary guidance and literature. JRSM Cardiovascular Disease, 6, 2048004016687211. https://dx.doi.org/10.1177%2F2048004016687211

NUR4667 Assignment Public Health Policies Instructions