Health Promotion: Ethics and Strategies for Population Health

Running head : HEALTH PROMOTION
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1
HEALTH PROMOTION
Question 1:
In the recent era, health promotion is more relevant to address public health issues
(Yanek et al., 2016). According to the health ethics, a medical practice should be ethical
considering the non-maleficence, beneficence, health maximization, efficiency and autonomy
and every cases this ethics should be maintained (Barrett , 2016). Non communicable diseases
include the condition such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes respiratory conditions and in high-
income countries; these diseases are the major contributor to the mortality rate (Levy et al.,
2019).While all non-communicable diseases are not manageable, risk factors of the majority of
the non-communicable diseases can be reduced with the health promotion with the assistance of
governing bodies. According to the principle of clinical practice, of the risk factors can be
modifiable then early and premature death can be avoided (Barrett, 2016). From the health
promotion perspective, in order to protect population health, it is the responsibility of the
government to restrict individual liberty in the context of smoking (Yanek et al., 2016). Although
smoking has declined considerably in the recent decade, 20% of the American still smoke and
deaths related to smoking remarkably increases in the lower economic countries (Becker et al.,
2016). As discussed by Mason, Wheeler and Brown (2015), smoking killed approximately 100
million people around the globe and in 2030, 80% of the death around the globe would be
because of the high rate of tobacco consumption . It is human rights to enjoy individual freedom
as discussed above the majority of the individuals smoke as a choice of their lifestyle. For
example, many role models smoke as part of their lifestyle choice and to relieve their stress in a
challenging environment (Blue et al., 2016). However, not only active smokers but the
individuals surrounded by the active smoker also experience consequences such as lung cancer.
Another example is the adolescents whose actions are generally derived by the peer group and

2
HEALTH PROMOTION
the parents in the home setting (Barrett et al.,2016) . Adolescents with the peer group encompass
smokers and parents who have the habit of smoking is highlighted as the major driver of
adopting the habit of smoking which further contributed to the non-communicable disease and
mortality rate. As discussed by Williams et al. (2016), 88% of the American smokes on a daily
basis and in this case, the individuals with lung cancer can be a smoker or nonsmoker.
Consequently, to protect population health and their wellbeing, it is the responsibility of the
government to restrict the individual liberty of smoking through amending policies. Although it
is breaching the autonomy, to promote the public wellbeing, the restrictions support
beneficence. The government can restrict choices such as banning public smoking from public
places such as restaurants, schools and parking lot (Blue et al., 2016). Other initiatives can be
taken by the government such as creating tax fund smoking cessation program, implementing a
public health campaign to encourage individuals for eating a healthy diet and increase tobacco
tax.
Question 2:
With the global burden of disease , health promotion is highlighted as one of the effective
strategies to reduce premature deaths and promoting the wellbeing of the individuals. As
discussed by Carter, Braunack-Mayer and Jancey (2016), ethics is highlighted as one of the
critical attributes of health promotion and professionals require a clear understanding of the
health promotion ethics to protect the population health. As discussed by Hoffman and Tan
(2015), health promotion practitioner implements a wide variety of strategies and projects and it
is a vision how society should be arranged where they consider health as the product of the
economic, social, psychological living conditions. Therefore, it is crucial for the health