Smoking and Alcohol Consumption in the USA

Running Head: SMOKING AND ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION IN THE USA
Smoking and Alcohol Consumption in the USA
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Smoking and Alcohol Consumption in the USA
The World Health Organization (WHO, 2019) defines primary healthcare as an all-
inclusive-society strategy to health and community welfare that confines itself to the needs and
predilections of communities, households and down to individual preferences. Primary
healthcare nursing majors in the provision of health services such as identification, treatment,
and care of individuals with health challenges, early intervention, promotion of good health and
preventing diseases. This paper discusses the practice of Primary Health Care (PHC) in dealing
with the issue of smoking and excessive consumption of alcohol in the United States of America.
To achieve this mandate, the author attempts to establish the correlation between the various
Social determinants of health (SDHs) and smoking and alcohol consumption is USA, reviews
various epidemiological studies conducted in USA on Alcohol and smoking, conducts analysis
of the PHC nurse role in combating the problem and looks into the pertinence of cultural
competency of a modern-day PHC nursing practitioner in USA.
Social Determinants of Health
Dawson et al. (2015) define Socials determinants of well-being as the settings in which
an individual exists right from birth, growth, career, livelihood, and maturity, including a
complex set of systems and forces that mold the conditions of one’s contemporary life. These
schemes and molders include but not limited to political structures, social policies, economic
policies, development agendas, and social norms. From these systems and forces, several social
determinants of health that bear great impact on one’s health emerge. This section discusses
selected social determinants of health namely equity and social justice, the neighborhood
conditions and physical environment, access to health care services, employment status, and
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Smoking and Alcohol Consumption in the USA
education opportunities respectively. Their contribution to causing or solving the issue of alcohol
and smoking in the US, whether positive or otherwise is analyzed herein.
Equity and social justice
Variations in cigarette-related effects can arise from factors at different echelons. This
includes factors in the wider socioeconomic milieu, different vulnerabilities, different exposures,
different concerns from cigarette and alcohol drinking and different experience within the health
scheme. Rios et al. (2019) aver that the relationship between equality and social justice and
alcohol and smoking is a complex one as it does not align with the usual gradient-like other risk
factors because vulnerability increases with decreasing equality and social justice. Equity and
social justice in smoking and alcohol affiliated harm in smoking and alcohol-related harm
differential experiences to protracted life stressors like socially alienated groups and migrants get
more subjected to stress and discrimination. Lack of social protection will push the victims of
inequality and social injustice to seek refuge in binge drinking and smoking. Neighborhood
conditions and physical environment,
Neighborhood conditions and physical environment
Evans-Polce, Lanza and Maggs (2016) observe that disparity in exposure to cigarette and
alcohol commercials and stores may positively or negatively impact on a given population. He
asserts that populations in a poor neighborhood with a high density of liquor stores are more
probable to experience cigarette smoking and alcoholism effects than those in affluent
neighborhoods where alcohol stores are not easily accessible. Brown et al. (2016) add that
individuals living in deprived neighborhoods have a higher propensity to live close to heavy
consumers of both alcohol and cigarette smoking. Overcrowding will lead to influence of
nonsmokers and nonalcoholic to begin engaging in these unhealthy habits.
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