Policy, Power & Politics in Health Care Provision

Running Head: HEALTH CARE 0
POLICY, POWER &
POLITICS IN HEALTH CARE
PROVISION

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1) The main aim of policy cycle is to make sense to the public servants in relation with policy
task with planning out a sequence of steps to turn ideas into recommendations and thus offer
a suitable structure considering the process of policymaking (Howlett, 2009). With the help
of institution of government, public servants can be benefitted while developing in extent
with policy cycle approach. This cycle begins with an issue, look up for mark, tests plans, and
offer suggestions (Nill & Kemp, 2009). The results are related to evaluations and the cycles
began others. Policymakers found this beneficial as policy cycles offer a flexible and modest
framework and whatever it's flawed, the policy cycle does not suffer from the rationalist
tendencies. Moreover, the government also not required to select between content and
processes between politics and consultation. Policy is known to be a sequence of
interconnecting steps and a policy process is more than a decision plays among politician and
interests (Walt et al, 2008).
In developing a new policy, the cycle can be beneficial in various sorts as it can be implement
to wholly political systems and yet it is simple and understandable. The importance of cycles
shows flexible policymaking and also there is a broad range of significant learning depend on
analysis of specific levels – such as the bottom-up versus top-down approach to the domain
of policy formulation. In these procedures, the academic idea is simple and the resulting
instruction to policy practitioners is straightforward. It is tough – but not impossible – to
define a more realistic, more meaningful, analytical model to policymakers (and provide
suggestions on how to act) in the same straightforward way (Head, 2008).
Hence, this model helping the entrepreneur or policy practitioner to comprehend the broader
picture which is important in the development and successful execution of a policy.
3) The health of people is threatened by various factors comprising disease, environmental
factors, unhealthy lifestyle, social inequality and all that undermine health. All these
problems are counteracted with various public health actions. With new public health
approach, the need to develop on new changes charging from past decade and shifting away
from the prevalence of the medical model in extent with sustainable health improvement
(Frohlich & Potvin, 2008).
In addition, actual and perceived blockades in past have abridged health of people to a
classified, fragmented and as a consequence, less in effect programme. Practitioners of Public
health were challenged to involve within their role advocacy among the wider series of
economic, social, and environmental problems and to take best out from clusters of cross-

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disciplinary dimensions, practices and theories and build up a sustainable and integrative
approach to creating health (Craig et al, 2012).
Six main methodologies to people health practice executed among earliest time and the
modern era and these comprises – (1) Health Protection (antiquity–1830s), (2) Miasma
control (1840s – 1870s), (3) Contagion Control (1880s – 1930s), (4) Preventive medicine
(1940s-1960s), (5) Primary health care (1970s-1980s) and (6) Health Promotion (1990s-
present) (Frieden, 2010). The first approach is concern with public health as health
protection, facilitated through societies’ social structures. The second approach is related to
shaping of a unique public health discipline by the sanitary movement and the third approach
include public health as contagion control. Moreover, the fourth approach includes public
health as protective medicine and similarly, the last approach is linked with the “new public
health” – health promotion.
Finally, because of the new health promotion paradigm, it will ensure healthy conditions for
people in the 21st century as today’s world is characterized by perverse issues of poverty,
emerging diseases, global inequality and constant conflicts—problem that need more radical
public health contexts than that of the new public health (Sorensen et al, 2012).
4) Some important social determinants have become sociological issues to the health of
person. These sociological issues are low level of income, low social status, poor
employment conditions, low rate of literacy, poor childhood experiences, no access to health
services and unhygienic conditions in which they live (Braveman et al, 2011). For example-
Torres Islanders and aboriginals face several sociological issues that hampers their living.
Although, they were the first persons of Australia but they are invisible currently due to low
population. Employment rate of Aboriginals is very much low when as compared to natives
of Australia. The residential areas of Torres islanders are economically separated from the
mainstream economy of Australia (Mackenbach, 2012). With low income, these people do
not get easy access to other facilitates that is accessed by native Australians. The aboriginal
population do not get equal and easy access to opportunities such as housing, childcare, law
media, community planning, business, transportation, and agriculture. The above mentioned
facilities are shaped by unequal income distribution, distribution of power at local, global,
and national level.
Other social conditions where people are born, work, live, learn, function with wide range of
health issues, and quality of risky lives (Haslam, 2009). Apart from this, social exclusion,