Healthcare System and Policy: Critical Analysis of the CDC Website

This report provides a detailed analysis of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website, focusing on its role in healthcare systems and policy. It explores the website's purpose, which is to promote public health through disease prevention, health promotion, and education. The report examines the website's content, including information on various diseases, healthy living practices, and travel recommendations. It also discusses the theoretical underpinnings of the CDC's approach, emphasizing the importance of health communication and social marketing. Furthermore, the report highlights the practical applications of the CDC's resources in nursing practice, particularly in areas such as antibiotic stewardship. The author concludes with a personal impression of the website's value and reliability, emphasizing its role as a key resource for public health information. The report also includes references to the CDC website and relevant publications.

Running head: HEALTHCARE SYSTEM AND POLICY
Healthcare system and policy
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1HEALTHCARE SYSTEM AND POLICY
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
The reason for choosing CDC (https://www.cdc.gov/) is that it supports and conducts
health promotion, preparedness activities and prevention in United States with an aim of
improving public health in the country. The website www.cdc.gov is the leading national public
health institute in United States that provide credible health information by applying research
and findings for improving daily lives of people and responding to their health emergencies. This
website is a public domain that provides reliable information at no cost and permission providing
access to important topics on health and safety, scientific data, statistics, resources and tools on
over 900 topics (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Works 24/7, 2017).
CDC provides credible information about infectious diseases, environmental health,
health promotion, occupational health and safety, food borne diseases, educational activities and
injury prevention. Moreover, CDC provides information on non-communicable diseases like
diabetes and obesity like epidemiological data and current statistics. This website also provide
information on traveller’s health providing guidelines for vaccination and travel health notices at
three levels: practice usual, enhanced and nonessential travel precautions. It also provides
information that one would look for is regarding healthcare programs, campaigns for targeting
transmission of communicable diseases and ways to educate people about proper hygiene.
Concisely, CDC is a reliable website providing information about disease control and prevention,
education and awareness among public for improving their overall health (Diseases &
Conditions | CDC, 2017).

2HEALTHCARE SYSTEM AND POLICY
Description of the organization
CDC website is aimed at prevention and control of diseases and is informative in nature.
It provides information about various diseases and conditions like cancer, diabetes, flu, heart
diseases, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), their epidemiological data and statistics. For the
prevention of diseases, CDC provide information on healthy living like food safety, adolescent
and school health, overweight and obesity, tobacco use and smoking, vaccinations and
immunizations. CDC website also provides information for travellers like travel destinations,
how to find a clinic nearby, disease directory and yellow book on latest travel recommendations
and health questions. This website is useful as it prepare people for emergencies or natural
hazard preparedness like severe weather forecasting, chemical and radiation emergencies, recent
health incidents and disease outbreak and steps to be taken to protect oneself and their families
during natural calamity outbreak (CDC Organization About CDC, 2017).
CDC also covers topics like injury, violence and safety, workplace safety, diseases
affecting people in the local region and provides information on how to perform proper hand
hygiene to prevent or control pathogen transmission. CDC website also conveys information to
people on how to defend them from health threats, lab safety and provide updated information on
ways to save lives and protect people. This website is linked to CDC.gov and link to official
information on U.S. government services for public health and safety.
Theory and Rationale
The residents and public is the main audience for CDC who can benefit from the
information provided in the website and make changes in their lives for healthy living on a
personal as well as community level. This website is also intended to truly make people

3HEALTHCARE SYSTEM AND POLICY
understand the importance of health and safety and make them actively engaged in health
promotion programs and campaigns. Through health communication and social marketing, this
website also intended to inculcate motivation in targeted population so that they make lifestyle
modifications and benefit from health information and behaviour.
The purpose of CDC is to improve the overall health of the population by providing
credible information online. It is aimed at improving lifestyle of people and prepares them for
health emergencies and disease outbreak and this distinguishes CDC from other peer agencies.
This website’s focus is to develop and apply disease prevention and control, health promotion,
education activities and environmental health for improving people’s health in United Stated.
CDC website is responsible for control of disease spread and prevention by consulting and
assisting with other international agencies and nations in improving disease control and
prevention and health promotion activities.
The website can better serve its constituents by improving quality and managing
performance. In the public health scenario, the improvement tools for quality and performance
can help to support and enhance opportunities for the government and public by increasing its
effectiveness of public health systems, agencies and services. The changes in tools, concepts,
approaches and processes can be helpful in measuring the health of people and communities in a
better way as they can gather information about the health determinants and outcomes. The
future implications of this website is that CDC can better link with other healthcare
organizations, industry and business as they can use the tools and concepts provided by CDC in
improving their process performance and service delivery (Mission, Role and Pledge About
CDC, 2017).

4HEALTHCARE SYSTEM AND POLICY
Practical application in nursing practice
In nursing practice, CDC website provides information for nursing homes prescribing
antibiotic practices to reduce the inappropriate use of antibiotics and protecting public from
antibiotic-resistant infections such as MRSA, C. difficile. CDC guide nurses in improving the
acute care hospitals and nursing homes via antibiotic stewardship programs for the optimization
of treatment of infections and reduction of adverse events associated with antibiotic use in
America. Moreover, the website also provides usual information about proper hygiene and health
information to protect people from diseases and infections (Core Elements of Hospital Antibiotic
Stewardship Programs Antibiotic Use CDC, 2017).
Other healthcare organizations like workplace health and safety, environmental control in
U.S. and health I.T. CDC can use health IT for public health functions and information like
Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and interoperability between EHRs and hospital sources like
lab systems for targeting an area for improvement. Patient safety and quality improvement can
also be enhanced by linking CDC with EHR privacy and confidentiality for better use.
Personal impression
I will visit this site again as this healthcare site is highly informative and reliable. The
information ranges from flu to battling bugs and guide people in tackling any sort of pandemic
situations. The website conveys information regarding the major outbreaks serving as watchdog
and resource on public illness ranging from food contamination to emerging health threats to
common public health issues like obesity and diabetes. I will use this site as it provides stepwise
information about proper hygiene and disease prevention and transmission. Moreover, this site

5HEALTHCARE SYSTEM AND POLICY
also acts as frontlines of emergency responses and preparedness including natural calamities like
earthquakes and explosions as mass emergencies.

6HEALTHCARE SYSTEM AND POLICY
References
CDC Organization | About | CDC. (2017). Cdc.gov. Retrieved 20 November 2017, from
https://www.cdc.gov/about/organization/cio.htm
CDC Works 24/7. (2017). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved 20 November
2017, from https://www.cdc.gov/
Core Elements of Hospital Antibiotic Stewardship Programs | Antibiotic Use | CDC.
(2017). Cdc.gov. Retrieved 20 November 2017, from https://www.cdc.gov/antibiotic-
use/healthcare/implementation/core-elements.html
Diseases & Conditions | CDC. (2017). Cdc.gov. Retrieved 20 November 2017, from
https://www.cdc.gov/diseasesconditions/index.html
Mission, Role and Pledge | About | CDC. (2017). Cdc.gov. Retrieved 20 November 2017, from
https://www.cdc.gov/about/organization/mission.htm