Assignment on Public Health pdf

Running head: PUBLIC HEALTH
Public health
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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The essay is the critique of the report- “Australia: The Healthiest Country by 2020”,
where various policy recommendations are made by the National Preventative Health Taskforce
to reduce the alcohol consumptions, control tobacco, ad decrease the obesity rates (Australia
National Preventative Health Taskforce 2009). There is wide ranging scope to these
recommendations. Thus, the aim of the essay is to critique and identify the strength and
weakness of the National Preventative Health Taskforce report, from te perspective of the
environmental health promotion.
Critical analysis of chapter 1
The chapter 1 of Taskforce reports deals with the building of the preventive health in the
Australian communities. The vision, purpose and strategy for preventive health mentioned
reflect the great deal of thinking and collection of evidence on the national health issues. It
represents the consultations made with huge number of Australians working in diverse health
related fields. Different organizations private, public, nongovernmental organisations are
involved. The Australia’s call for action is based on the national and international research on the
health issues and evidence from varied sources. The use of the bulk of evidence as witnessed
from the graphs and charts supports the economic approach to public policy (Harrison and
Robson 2011). It demonstrates the strong base for such healthiest perspective. Overall chapter
signifies that the authors contributing to this bulk of information, and the number of studies
being cited have various common features. The main one includes adoption of the “Public health
approach”. It is known to be the healthiest norm by the economist Eric Crampton. It may be
considered the strength of the approach (Drummond et al. 2015).

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The Australia’s response to call for action and need for action appears convincing as both
the opposing and diverse views are considered. There is high chance that despite being based on
best possible evidence, it may be challenged by different interests groups. It is to be appreciated
that the report also intends to build evidence for future action (Watson et al. 2014). The same is
evident from the themes arising from the consultations. The need for action focuses on the
chronic illness due to three main factors adding to the health care costs that are obesity, alcohol
and tobacco. In this regard the report makes several policy recommendations for these diseases
and addictions. It includes use of tax system to decrease the sedentary behaviour, and regulation
in the tobacco manufacturing and packaging. The recommendation proposed by the Taskforce
has wide scope. It is questionable if there is complete analysis underlying the recommendations.
It is not clear if there is a rigorous assessment of the evidence on the discussed issues and is
considered the weakness of Taskforce (Harrison and Robson 2011).
While critiquing the economist approach and the healthiest approach, it can be said the
economic approach takes into account all the benefits and costs. On the other hand the healthiest
approach only considers the health benefits offered by the policy (Wutzke et al. 2017). The
commitment to Australia- becoming the healthiest country cannot be disagreed as worse health
outcomes are not preferred by anyone. However, there may be adverse impact on the
environment as the health resources are scarce. There are overall different goals for sociality and
individuals as a whole. Between health and other goals, there are tradeoffs recognised by
economic approach. It is not justified to spend more resources on the prevention of illness as the
resources utilised have an opportunity cost and these cannot be devoted to other public economic
activities. The activities that are proposed to give benefits have not received the government’s
funding. On the other hand the opportunity cost is reduced to the missed benefits of these

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activities. It means that there is no limit to budget as witnessed from the strategies mentioned in
the chapter 1. Health promotion in this regard is an open ended commitment (Harrison and
Robson 2011).
It can be said that the Taskforce strategies align with the ecological model of health
promotion, as it focused on the multiple levels of influence on health behaviours. The Taskforce
focuses on the individual factors influencing behaviour such as personality, beliefs of people as
well as interpersonal factors such as interactions to create barriers to interpersonal growth for
health promotion or provide social support. The taskforce also takes into considerations, the
organisation factors to promote health through regulations on alcohol, community factors as well
as public policy factors, which includes policy recommendations and laws. For example the
awareness campaigns and teams are based on the ecological model (Sallis, Owen and Fisher
2015.). The Taskforce actions to burning health issues also seem to follow the health belief
model. It is witnessed from the focus on the individual health related behaviours that cause
sickness, perceived barriers to actions and exposure to factors that promote action. It is also
evident from the bulk of the information collected for designing the short term and the long term
interventions for obesity, tobacco and alcohol. It is also evident from the considerations for
implementation such as communicating the target population about the steps involved in taking
target actions. As per Sharma and Romas (2017) both the health belief model and ecological
model are effective approach in designing the health promotion interventions by understanding
the health behaviour. Further drawing on the behavioural economics and using financial
incentives helps reinforce the behaviour change and motivate others to do the same. This also
aligns with theory of reasoned actions and social cognitive theory. Such practices will develop
community with people on same page in regards to healthy behaviour (Halpern et al. 2015).

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Despite the benefits of the ecological model and the health belief model, there are
several drawbacks on environment in regards to the strategies applied by the Taskforce. It is
because there is jumble between the private and external cost. It may create the misleading
information for the public who are worried about the cost being imposed on them by smokers.
The policy changes recommended in the chapter 1 ignores the private benefits of behaviour at
issue are being avoided. It means the people who are non-smoker or non-obese are likely to
suffer for the cost. It may lead to socially wasteful policy choices as the cost benefit analysis
may likely overstate the net benefits of policy (Drummond et al. 2015).
It can be argued that the benefits to be obtained by the policy changes may only be
attributed to the fraction of the total health costs. It does not mean that the policy implementation
will increase the overall well being of the community although it reduces the cost and given the
fact the prevention works. For instance the smokers may overestimate the adverse health effects
of smoking. The positive impact in this situation is the right decision made by the uninformed
consumers (Reeve and Gostin 2015). However, there is an advantage to the health promotion
approach on the environment as there is range of options considered to achieve the objective.
There are measures to change the physical environment of the patients such as banning the
alcohol in the residential areas to prevent exposure to children at early life. Further, having
restaurants only serving healthy food will make people give more effort to reach the unhealthy
food and ultimately quit the same (Giles et al. 2016). These constitute the strength of the
Taskforce. In future, it will lead to community that is focusing on the well being

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Critical analysis of chapter 2
The targets for obesity seem to be very ambitious to be reached by 2020 although the
strategy is made of three multi layer phases. For obesity there are various interventions chosen
that have long term effects such as making available the healthy food supplies and embedding
the physical activity and healthy eating in everyday life. All the interventions in the phased
approach works ate multiple levels such as personal development, com unity development,
organisational and partnership development, effective provision of the health information and
strategy development. Interventions like education centres will help children and adults make
healthy choices. The Taskforce also provides the opportunities to the young people to take part
in the activities like sports and others. Ban on marketing and advertising of the fast food will
help children stay focused on healthy food habits. The focus on the maternal and child health
improves the health pattern right since early years. The Taskforce also focused on the low
income community (Harrison and Robson 2011, Giles et al. 2016, Watson et al. 2014).
The strength of these initiatives include the cutting down the health care cost and
contributing the economy by tackling obesity and comorbidities such as cancer and
cardiovascular disease. These initiatives by the Taskforce promote the community togetherness
and the social cohesion of the group support. People get the opportunities to cut down depression
and make new friends. In addition to the physical health it also improves the mental health. the
physical activity and healthy eating helps decrease stress and depression. Community health
hubs and food hubs are effective methods to foster the social justice (Rose 2017). Physical
activity releases the endorphins that improves the individual mood, and exercises leaves calming
effect on the body. It is an overall healthy way to tackle disease.

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The strategies in chapter 2 align with the social cognitive theory as behaviour change
targeted by the Taskforce include behavioural capability, self-efficacy, expectations, self
control, observation and learning reinforcements, which are all the elements of the social
cognitive theory (Bandura 2014). It may be particularly useful for the rural communities, and
help understand the influence of social determinants of health and how past experiences affect
health behaviour. The interventions like counselling describe behaviours of patients based on
subjective norms. A positive subjective norm will receive in greater perceived control over
unhealthy behaviour. There is high likelihood that intentions are governing changes in behaviour.
It is in alignment with the theory of reasoned action and the planned behaviour (Montano and
Kasprzyk 2015). Considering these theories are the strength of the Taskforce, as they support
disease prevention and explain health behaviour.
There are several weakness associated with the above mentioned initiatives such as
issues related to funding and lack of staffing. Further, it can be argued that the strategies are
losing out to direct care. It means that the health promotion is being seen as unimportant to the
staff such as nurses who are the frontline carers (Edelman et al. 2017). They are the most
important people to deal with the direct patient care. Other weakness is the poor addressing of
the factors such as poor understanding of the health promotion among the staff. The biggest
weakness is the lack of training among staff. Poor skills and knowledge amongst staff leads to
unsuccessful health promotion (Eldredge et al., 2016).
Conclusion
It can be concluded from the critical analysis that the heath costs created by certain
activities are judged to be undesirable. The report indicates the role of government is to

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discourage such activities initiated by the individuals. Overall the Task force has set out some
arbitrary targets for reducing activities causing increase in health care costs. The Task force
effectively recommends the policy makers to fulfil those targets. However, the benefits of the
policies and the social costs are not examined. It is questionable as the Taskforce asserts that the
targets would be achieved through the targets chosen arbitrarily. It can be concluded that the
National Preventative Health Taskforce Report has done great hard work in performing the cost
benefit analysis. However, it bypassed the hard work required to make the calculations credible
needed for analysing the public policy rigorously. The report well established in the second
chapter obesity caused by the excessive eating, sedentary lifestyle and lack of physical activity
reduced the positive health outcomes. However, it is not established that the policy
recommendations would indeed reduce these things or work in desired fashion and would be
beneficial. It is necessary for the policy makers to know how health benefits will flow from the
changes made. The statistics are well cited by the Task force reports and host of data is
presented. There should have been proper systematic assessment of the costs and benefits of the
policies recommended.

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References
Australia. National Preventative Health Taskforce, Moodie, A.R., Daube, M. and Carnell, K.,
2009. Australia: The Healthiest Country by 2020: National Preventative Health Strategy-the
Roadmap for Action. National Preventative Health Taskforce.
Bandura, A., 2014. Social cognitive theory of moral thought and action. In Handbook of moral
behavior and development(pp. 69-128). Psychology Press.
Drummond, M.F., Sculpher, M.J., Claxton, K., Stoddart, G.L. and Torrance, G.W.,
2015. Methods for the economic evaluation of health care programmes. Oxford university press.
Edelman, C.L., Mandle, C.L. and Kudzma, E.C., 2017. Health Promotion Throughout the Life
Span-E-Book. Elsevier Health Sciences.
Eldredge, L.K.B., Markham, C.M., Ruiter, R.A., Kok, G. and Parcel, G.S., 2016. Planning
health promotion programs: an intervention mapping approach. John Wiley & Sons.
Giles, E.L., Sniehotta, F.F., McColl, E. and Adams, J., 2016. Acceptability of financial
incentives for health behaviour change to public health policymakers: A qualitative study. BMC
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financial-incentive programs for smoking cessation. New England Journal of Medicine, 372(22),
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Harrison, M. and Robson, A., 2011. Prevention no cure: A critique of the report of Australia's
national preventative health Taskforce. Agenda: A Journal of Policy Analysis and Reform, pp.7-
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Montano, D.E. and Kasprzyk, D., 2015. Theory of reasoned action, theory of planned behavior,
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Reeve, B. and Gostin, L.O., 2015. Creating the Conditions for People to Lead Healthy, Fulfilling
Lives: Law Reform to Prevent and Control NCDs.
Rose, N., 2017. Community food hubs: an economic and social justice model for regional
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Sallis, J.F., Owen, N. and Fisher, E., 2015. Ecological models of health behavior. Health
behavior: Theory, research, and practice, 5, pp.43-64.
Sharma, M. and Romas, J.A., 2017. Theoretical foundations of health education and health
promotion. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Watson, W.L., Kelly, B., Hector, D., Hughes, C., King, L., Crawford, J., Sergeant, J. and
Chapman, K., 2014. Can front-of-pack labelling schemes guide healthier food choices?
Australian shoppers’ responses to seven labelling formats. Appetite, 72, pp.90-97.
Wutzke, S., Morrice, E., Benton, M. and Wilson, A., 2017. What will it take to improve
prevention of chronic diseases in Australia? A case study of two national approaches. Australian
Health Review, 41(2), pp.176-181.