Politics and Policy in Public Health and Health Promotion

This essay explores the impact of politics and policy on public health and health promotion, with a focus on the Teenage Pregnancy Policy in the UK. It discusses the background, strategies, and effectiveness of the policy in reducing teenage pregnancy rates. It also examines the roles of stakeholders and the health and social care workforce in implementing health promotion initiatives.

POLITICS AND POLICY
POLITICS AND POLICY IN PUBLIC HEALTH AND HEALTH
PROMOTION
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Background......................................................................................................................................2
Policy...............................................................................................................................................3
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................6
References........................................................................................................................................7

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Introduction
Health promotion is the procedure of increasing control over health issues and ensures an
improved quality of health and hygiene of people. This essay will emphasize on Teenage
Pregnancy Policy developed by the government of the UK in order to decrease the number of
victims of teenage pregnancy. Teenage pregnancy is a current social issue of the UK as the
teenage pregnancy rate of 18.8% per 1000 women who are aged between 15-17 years. This
paper would demonstrate the effectiveness of the policy and the background of the policy. The
roles and responsibilities of the policy supporters would be discussed in the following essay.
Background
Public Health is the health condition of the whole population that needs government support and
regulation. There are several health issues in the UK, such as lung cancer due to high
consumption of tobacco, teenage pregnancy, bowel cancer, dental health; among which teenage
pregnancy has become a severe issue for the society, which is creating a negative impact of mind
and body of the teenagers. Teenage pregnancy is the situation when a girl aged 13-19 years, gets
pregnant while not having legal adulthood. As a result, the threats of medical complication of
both mother and child emerges, the teenage mothers suffer from psychological problems like a
digression, Baby blues, anxiety, and other physical disorders. For the reduction of teenage
pregnancy in the UK, the Labor Government of the UK introduced a policy to control the
teenage pregnancy rate over the next ten years (1999- 2010) (Hadley, Chandra, and Ingham,
2016). The policy has been implemented to lessen the teenage pregnancy rate by 50%. The
policy involved a few strategies Known as Teenage Pregnancy Strategy (TPS) that has
immensely worked in the areas of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland (Sorhaindo, 2017) . The
ideology of the UK government was to preserve satisfactory health condition of their women and
child. The policy included several actions such as improvement of teenager’s ideas regarding
sexual relationships, face-to-face conversations with the parents and the teenagers, improving the
health care strategies and so on. The policy became successful, with the successful role-play of

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the stakeholders. The doctors, nurses, hospitals, parents, teachers, and the teenage people were
the stakeholders of the policy.
This policy was supported by two political ideologies: liberalism and conservatism. According to
the liberalism ideology, teenage health care strategies are an equal right to all the teenagers.
Secondly, according to conservatism, health care is a human necessity. These policies will help
to reduce the teenage pregnancy rate. In the year 2010, the pregnancy rate in the UK was
30.03%. Proper application of the teenage pregnancy policy had drawn a reduction of 11% in
teenage pregnancy rate (Chhabra, and Singh, 2016).
Figure1: Reducing the rate of teenage pregnancy
(Source: created by the learner)
Policy
● Impact of political and social policies on health promotion
The pregnancies, which occur in a female under the age of 19, are termed as teenage pregnancy.
The UK has highest pregnancy rates under the age of 18 in the Western part of Europe. The
teenage pregnancy is one of the biggest issues in the country (Plant, Pariante, Sharp & Pawlby,
2015). It is the right of young people to control their reproductive and sexual health that includes

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the decision to becoming the parent at a young age. It is a fact that teenage pregnancy is
sometimes are unplanned and unwanted. Due to such pregnancies, the teenage parent and their
newborn child are likely to face a series of long-term negative social, education, and health
consequences. It’s not the child who only suffers social ignorance but the young parent as well
(Justus, Ndempavali and Karera, 2019). So it's essential for the government to work on health
promotion, especially to create an effective teenage pregnancy policy to tackle the young age
pregnancy. The reduction in pregnancy rate among the teen is one of the priority areas in the
government's Sexual Health Improvement structure. The UK Labor Government in 1999
launched a 10-year Teenage Pregnancy Strategy to tackle the high rates and decrease social
prohibition. It was introduced to reduce the under-18 conception rate to half.
The strategy for teenage pregnancy prevention was divided into four sections: collaborated
action by national and local government, better elimination through sex and relationship
education, proper access of efficient contraception and a campaign to coordinate and support
young parents. Since the implementation of this strategy, the pregnancy rate of under the age of
18 has drastically fallen by 51 % with a significant reduction in poverty-stricken areas (Hosseini,
S., 2018).
Teenage pregnancy might be a positive event for a few young women, but for the majority, it is
freighting because there might be some adverse social results related to teenage motherhood in
the United Kingdom (Atkinson, Shaw, and French, 2016). The problem is that a young mother
experiences the issues of poverty, unemployment or insufficient remunerations and education.
There are several strategies to reduce pregnancy such as education, skill improvement, emotional
and social support for teenage mothers and services such as contraception for pregnant teenagers
and young people. The government has implemented social policies to handle such problems of
teenage motherhood.
● Relation to the delivery of health promotion
The teenage of pregnancy is one of the critical stages for being pregnant because of the
increased risk of medical complications, such as stillbirth, premature, and several social
consequences (Jones, 2019). The social outcome a teenage parent experiences are marital
instability, school disruption, financial problems, and child rearing are some of the
difficulties face by young parents. To tackle such issue the UK government has already

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implemented social and political policies. The 10 years plan to reduce the teenage pregnancy
to half was a successful strategy which was accomplished by proper health promotion
strategy (Starbird, Norton, and Marcus, 2016). An awareness campaign on teenage
pregnancy was introduced to educate young parents and teenage pregnant to tackle such
issues. Proper information was given on birth control, proper use of contraceptive, pregnancy
issues and abortions. This strategy was accomplished by the collaboration of the national and
local government. It focuses on sex and relationship education in schools, teenage
pregnancies effects on health and proper use of contraceptive. The strategy's actions plan was
monitored thoroughly, and the reach of this plan or campaign was monitored by an annual
tracking system. The progress of the campaign was reviewed and compared with the similar
areas that helped them to identify the poorer performing areas. This comparison confirms that
all the implemented actions are actually working out and thus the rate would decrease even in
poverty-stricken areas. The poorer performing areas were then critically examined and then
changes are being made for betterment. The authority leadership was important in putting
this issue on the national agenda. The initial stage of the policy was slow, but the priority was
to sustain this for 10 years, which was accomplished (Gilpin, R., 2018). The authorities
launched a national communication campaign to reach young people and their parents for
corresponding aid for young parents. The Department of Health appointed a minister for
teenage pregnancy in every section. The officials were quarterly done with TPU to monitor
the progress (Mezey et al., 2015).
● Role of the health and social care workforce
The health and social members play a very important role in defining the qualities in the
respective sectors. The health force members should be skilled and knowledgeable enough to
deal with critical situations. The health workforce is the backbone of health care. Health care
members include doctors, nurses, therapist, psychologists, counselors, paramedics,
pharmacists, volunteers, dietitians, etc. The doctors are the responsible person for curing the
disease. They examine and diagnose patients for their betterment of health and regular
progress of health reports are examined by them. The psychologists look after the emotional
behavior of the patient's. The nurses are for providing advice and crucial support. They might

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be doing their job in a clinic, aged care, and child care or hospitals. The paramedics are not a
part of the medical team but may assess pain and symptoms. The dieticians help the patient
with their eating habits. They develop a plan or chart which can help patients to have a
healthy lifestyle. They also provide education about the diets which are good and bad for
health. Social care is defined as the services provided to the children and elders who are in
need or at risk (Pickard, 2015). Services such as social work, personal care protection, and
social support come under social care. There are several social care groups which are
working passionately for the betterment of humans. Social care is generally termed as social
welfare in the UK. Social care provider works the equality of the people in various sectors
(Sullivan and Skelcher, 2017). They might be a social worker or might be related to health
but the aim or goal of both is the same.
Conclusion
Teenage pregnancy has reduced with the help of the Teenage Pregnancy Policy of UK Labor
Government. This essay had explored the positive impacts of Teenage pregnancy policies on the
health promotion of teenagers in the UK. The policies like promotion of sex education,
controlling the consumption of alcohol, controlling socioeconomic status, preventing sexual
abuses had resulted in the minimization of the rate of teenage pregnancy by 51% over the last 20
years. The role of the health service staff had been described in the essay that would influence
the project of reducing teenage pregnancy.
Sullivan

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References
Atkinson, L., Shaw, R.L. and French, D.P., 2016. Is pregnancy a teachable moment for diet and
physical activity behaviour change? An interpretative phenomenological analysis of the
experiences of women during their first pregnancy. British journal of health psychology, 21(4),
pp.842-858. (Pg. No. 4)
Chhabra, S. and Singh, R., 2016. Adolescents’ Birth Control Practices. J Contracept Stud, 1, p.3.
Gilpin, R., 2018. The challenge of global capitalism: The world economy in the 21st century.
Princeton University Press. (Pg no. 3)
Hadley, A., Chandra-Mouli, V., and Ingham, R., 2016. Implementing the UK Government's ten-
year teenage pregnancy strategy for England (1999-2010): applicable lessons for other countries.
Journal of Adolescent Health. (Pg. No. 2)
Hosseini, S., 2018. Poverty Reduction Policies In Iran; Opportunities And Threats (Master's
thesis, Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü). (Pg. No. 4)
Jones, A., 2019. Investigating the association between socio-economic position and stillbirth in
Brazil and the UK (Doctoral dissertation, Lancaster University). (Pg no.4 )
Justus, A.H., Ndempavali, S., and Karera, A., 2019. Psychological Factors Contributing To Baby
Dumping And Infanticide: Experiences Of Incarcerated Women Who Had Dumped Babies And
Committed Infanticide In Namibia. Journal of Innovation and Research in Health Sciences &
Biotechnology• Volume, 4(2), p.670. (Pg no. 4 )
Mezey, G., Meyer, D., Robinson, F., Bonell, C., Campbell, R., Gillard, S., Jordan, P., Mantovani,
N., Wellings, K. and White, S., 2015. Developing and piloting a peer mentoring intervention to
reduce teenage pregnancy in looked-after children and car (Pg no.5 )
Pickard, L., 2015. A growing care gap? The supply of unpaid care for older people by their adult
children in England to 2032. Ageing & Society, 35(1), pp.96-123. (Pg no.6 )
Plant, D.T., Pariante, C.M., Sharp, D., and Pawlby, S., 2015. Maternal depression during
pregnancy and offspring depression in adulthood: role of child maltreatment. The British Journal
of Psychiatry, 207(3), pp.213-220. (Pg. No. 3)

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Sorhaindo, A.M., 2017. Exploring young people's lived experience of a targeted positive youth
development programme: A phenomenological investigation of the Teens and Toddlers teenage
pregnancy prevention programme(Doctoral dissertation, London School of Hygiene & Tropical
Medicine). (Pg. No. 2)
Starbird, E., Norton, M. and Marcus, R., 2016. Investing in family planning: the key to achieving
sustainable development goals. Global Health: Science and Practice, 4(2), pp.191-210.
Sullivan, H. and Skelcher, C., 2017. Working across boundaries: collaboration in public
services. Macmillan International Higher Education. (Pg. No. 4)