Public Health Principles and Social Policy: A Case Study Approach

This essay delves into the principles of public health at both national and international levels, using a case study of an 80-year-old woman named Rose to illustrate the impact of lifestyle choices on health. It discusses key sociological and social policy concepts and their relation to healthcare, highlighting the role of social policies in mitigating health inequalities. The essay further explores strategies for promoting health-promoting behavior through education, role modeling, and effective communication within a relationship-centered care framework. It emphasizes the importance of healthier lifestyles, the risks associated with poor lifestyle choices, and how public health interventions, such as education programs and social policies, can improve the quality of life and prevent diseases.

RUNNING HEAD: PUBLIC HEALTHCARE
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Public Healthcare
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Introduction
Public healthcare is related to improving and protecting the health of communities and
people living in the society. This task can be achieved through promoting healthier lifestyle,
injury prevention and researching disease, and preventing, responding and detecting to infectious
disease. Basically, public healthcare is focused on promoting the healthier lifestyle and
preventing the health of whole population (Verweij & Dawson, 2007). The size of population
cannot matter in this case the prevention is done whether population size is bigger or smaller. “A
large part of public health is promoting healthcare equity, quality and accessibility”. Public
health professionals are trying to prevent problems from happening in the environment by
recommending policies, implementing education program and through conducting research. The
basis of public health is that it helps in analysing the threats that population is facing and the
health of population. The aim of public health is to enhance the quality or life of people by
treatment and prevention of diseases (Ryu, Kim, Lim, Tan & Chun, 2017).
The aim of this assessment is to understand the principles of health care at international
platform and national platform. Further, the ways through which public health can be promoted
are explained in this assessment that includes promotion through education programs, role
modelling and using effective communication techniques. This assessment is totally based on a
case study and analysis of that case helps in understanding the concept of public healthcare in a
better way and how this affect the lifestyle of people. At last, the choice of lifestyle and impact
of healthier lifestyle is highlighted with relation to the case study provided.

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Case Study
The case study focus on an 80 year old lady named Rose; she lived alone in a flat and
depends on her state pension. Her friends are concerned about her as her lifestyle impacted on
his body and led impact of obesity on her health. She doesn’t follow any healthy routine and
always spend time on eating junk, smoking cannabis and watching TV. On the basis of above
case below sections focus on the lifestyle that should be adopted by the people to reduce the
impact of diseases and to understand the benefits of adopting a healthier lifestyle. Public health is
basically concerned with prevention of diseases with the aim of improving public conditions and
quality of life. Government of countries are concerned for the health of public and formed
various policies and principles on national and international platform. The problems that are
identified in this case are obesity and poor lifestyle of lady and no education or guidance to her
that led her to this situation and resultant in major health issues. If proper education or health
related communication would be done with lady her lifestyle would be different and she might
be healthier at the age of 80 also as older adult lifestyle and their diets and societal environment
helps them to stay healthy and live longer life.
Public Health is defined as “the art and science of preventing disease, prolonging life and
promoting health through the organized efforts of society” (WHO, 2019).
Principles of Public health nationally and internationally
At national level, to promote public health some principles are developed by UK
government in order to improve nation’s health and to reduce inequalities related to health. The
principles that are made by Public Health England are, focus on antimicrobial resistance, climate
change, new emerging infections and cross border threats. PHE focus on three aspects that are
health protection, public health and health improvement (PHE, 2019). The public health issues

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that England facing are related to alcohol, antimicrobial resistance, bowel cancer, cervical, HIV,
mental health, smoking and obesity and the food environment.
Some of the public health principles that help in coping with these challenges are
developed that are principle for building healthy neighbourhood; that includes use of street and
enforce walkable neighbourhood as it impact positively on the health of older adults and increase
social interaction between them. Another one is principle for healthy housing that includes,
“retrofitting modifications to improve housing warmth and energy efficiency may help to reduce
health inequalities among those from low-income groups, notably older adults and those living
with chronic pre-existing conditions” and increase all the provision related to affordable housing
and diverse housing (Holland, Mossialos & Merkel, 2018). Principle of healthier food
environment and this indicate the quality and availability of food to all the people as increased
access to junk food ad unhealthier food leads to increase weight status in the local population and
lastly principle of sustainable and natural environment that includes, as poor quality of air is
directly link with the risk of developing various diseases in the population such as diabetes,
neonatal or poor birth outcomes, childhood mortality and respiratory problems (Smith &
Kandlik, 2014). Natural environment impact on the health of public in positive manner that
includes improvement in mental and physical health of people, reduce risk of disease that is
cardiovascular and reduce the risk of chronic diseases and mortality. Adaptation to climate
change helps the countries to prevent the public with health issues related to extreme temperature
such as fatal illness, heat stroke and issues related to respiratory diseases (Haines, Wilkinson,
Tonne & Roberts, 2009).
In the above case, principle of healthier food environment is applied as, lady lives alone
and has easy access to junk food and eateries and cannabis that impacted badly on her health and

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resultant in obesity. If these principles of public health are employed properly and the lady
doesn’t get access to unhealthy food might his health will never affect in negative way.
Social Policy and Sociological concept and its relation with healthcare
Sociological concept on the basis of five perspectives includes Marxism, Functionalism,
Feminism, and Postmodernism and Social action theory. Functionalism sees this as a neural
process that includes learning the values and norms of society. Further, Feminists and Marxists
see this process as the way that benefits the society as the ideas that are learnt from socialisation
maintains the society status quo. Marxism focused on capitalism and revolution in the society
and highlights the aspect such as political action and unequal power distribution (Greener &
Powell, 2009).
Social policy is related to the policies that government form with the aim of protecting
the society from various issues and use by the government for welfare of society. Mainly social
policy is concerned with the welfare and social services. Further, it is focused on the issues that
are not in control of government and social policies are also considered as the way that promote
welfare of society, promote the economic and social conditions which helps in shaping the
development of society welfare (Dean, 2019). Social policy in the UK focuses on family
allowances, national health services and full employment. The key elements of welfare state are
social security, health, housing, education and children welfare. Social policy helps in analysing
the different roles of society, government, international organization and market in giving
support to people across their life course. Social policy objective is to reduce inequality in groups
for access of services and support the social group that defined by the race, migration status,
sexual orientation, gender and socio-economic status.

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Social policy helps in reducing the health issues as policies are implemented for society
welfare and with the social policy public health status can be improved. Social policy helps in
changing the environment and that directly impact on reducing and preventing diseases in the
society. Public health problems are mainly social in character and can be solved with social
policy. Social policies possess that ability to mitigate the inequalities in health by distributing
health determinants to subgroups in population (Alcock, Haux, May & Wright, 2016).
The public health promoter work to influence the society to implement the social policies
in order to reduce hazardous health problems. For example, smoking is hazardous for health any
many social policies even don’t stop the impact on smoking on public health and that proved to
be ineffective. The reason of failure of this social policy was the individual behaviour as it is
conditioned by the society and past history of individual and structure of the society also
influence this habit in an individual behaviour so social policies will be successful only if
individual is ready to accept it. Social policies if formulated and implemented properly will help
to reduce health issues in the society (Hunter, 2018). Such as, smoking issue can be reduced if
government banned or prohibit the sales of cigarettes and stop cigarettes advertisement and
should reform its policies related to providing subsidies to tobacco farmers than only social
policy will prove to be helpful in preventing disease and ensuring public health. So social
policies influence public health and prove to be beneficial for reducing health issues in the
society.

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Health promotion through role modelling, education and effective communication for
relationship centered care (RCC)
Research Centered care is a framework for health care that focus on relationship building
and relationship quality and take it as an important aspect in healthcare. RCC is considered as the
care in which people participate and appreciate the relationship with each other and with oneself.
Health promotion aware people to control their health and live a healthier lifestyle and it also
includes environmental and social interventions that positively impact the individual health and
provide quality life to people by preventing and addressing the cause of health issues and provide
cure and treatment to people. Health promotion consists of three elements, good governance for
health, health literacy and healthy cities (Glanz, Rimer & Viswanath, 2015).
Promoting health is important for coping up with health issues as society gets aware
about the health problems and the lifestyle they can adopt. Nurses play a role in role modelling
that helps to make people aware about health issues. Earlier, nurses focused on changing
behaviour of individual towards their health and prevention of health all this includes in health
promotion. Health promotion helps in spreading awareness to the people about diseases such as
HIV, STD and other chronic diseases that harm the individual and can resultant in death. The
role of nurses in health promotion includes consultation, education to patients on side effects,
illness prevention and follow up treatment. Health promotion through role modelling positively
impacts on health of people and ensure positive outcomes that includes quality of life, self-
management, and knowledge of illness to patients (Eldredge, Markham, Ruiter & Parcel, 2016).
Health promotion through education programs helps in educating the population about
the health issues and impact of their lifestyle on health. Health promotion through education can
be done by conducting seminars, workshops, and classes. Cases like obesity and lifestyle issues

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can be handled by using education as a tool for health promotion. Health professionals, private
institutions and government made their priority for prevention of diseases. Education is
considered as the main tool through which health promotion can be done. Physicians, nurses and
health professional as an educator educate people and try to give the experience so that learners
get more aware about health issues and the root causes that develop health issue. Educational
programs related to health promotion can help in generating “long term critical thinking
processes that produce positive health choices, behavioural change and healthy lifestyle”.
Effective communication plays an important role in health promotion as “communication
is at the heart of human beings” and individual behaviour can be changed with the help of
communication. Health promotion can be done through radios and television as this medium
helps in communicating the reasons and spreading awareness to people about the concept of
public health. Health communicators are main drivers who contribute in improving and saving
life of people. In research centered care communication helps in building strong relationship with
the patients and that helps nurses and professionals to understand the mind-set of people and
make them aware about what they are doing right and what is wrong that is affecting their health.
To prevent diseases it is important to empower patients as “knowledge is power” and this helps
the patients to understand disease and take necessary prevention to cure it. Doctors, health
professionals and nurses should participate and promote health communication with patients that
directly contribute in health promotion and this positively impact on the population and allow
them to control their own health (Fertman & Allensworth, 2016).

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Benefits of healthy life style and risks associated with lifestyle choice
A healthy life style starts with eating a balance diet and exercising on regular basis and
this healthy lifestyle can add years in someone’s life. A healthy lifestyle has long term and short
term benefits. In long term, better and maintained lifestyle reduces the risk of certain diseases
such as diabetes, cancer, osteoporosis, obesity and cardiovascular disease. Whereas in short term,
it helps an individual to stay energetic and look best and feel best and helps in to maintain a
healthy and good weight. The change in lifestyle helps an individual to reduce the risk of these
diseases in their life and small changes in lifestyle gives bigger and more beneficial results.
Lifestyle changes includes, eating healthier food, full of calories and vitamins and taking
more exercise helps in prevention of various heart diseases. Changing lifestyle slowly and by
small steps will give positive impact on an individual health and mind. For example, in the case
of rose a lady who is 80 year old if followed a different lifestyle than might have not going
through problem of obesity, obesity is defined as the situation when body accumulated more fat
and that negatively impact the outer body. Obesity is caused by the excess of calories in the body
and that energy is not used somewhere imbalances the body system and that imbalance resultant
in obesity. The factors that imbalance energy are complex behaviour of a person ( more
consumption of junk food) and environment factors (the environment or forces like television
addiction and loneliness) and some genetic factors are causes of energy imbalance that linked to
obesity (Fullagar, 2012).
In the above case risk associated with lifestyle choices are wrong choice of food,
consumption of high fat items and more sugary food and engagement of lady in activities that
doesn’t help in burning calories and fats from the body. So lifestyle choices at last increases the
risk of diseases and to prevent diseases lifestyle choices should different and the main factor that

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shapes choices of individual is social environment. The environment influences most the choices
and way an individual leads their life. Making the healthier choices in consumption of food and
exercising regularly are the easiest way to change the lifestyle and all that helps in prevention of
diseases. Lifestyle at each stage of life is different for teenagers, for older adults and for children
lifestyle is different and choices that made at that time are also different and depend on
individual preferences. Public health can be prevented if lifestyle of people changes as “lifestyle
is a way used by people, groups and nations and is formed in specific geographical, economic,
political, cultural and religious text” and lifestyle is considered as the important factor in health.
According to World health organization (WHO, 2019), 65% per cent of factors related to
quality of life and individual health are linked with lifestyle. The people who follow unhealthy
lifestyle once in a lifetime face health issues such as illness and disabilities and problems like
hypertension, metabolic diseases, skeletal problems, and overweight, these entire problem again
create a unhealthy lifestyle (Adams, 2010). It is considered that health and lifestyle have
positive correlation as if lifestyles changes it will definitely impact on health of an individual.
The reasons of unhealthy lifestyle at current pace are unhealthy diet, consumption of alcohol,
smoking, stress, drug abuse and malnutrition. Therefore, from the analysis and study it can be
said that lifestyle and choices have significant impact on the health of people and for prevention
of public health it is essential to induce and educate them to change their lifestyle and choose
wisely their exercise and diet plans.

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Conclusion
Public health is defined as the art and science of prevention of diseases and helps in
promoting the health in society by organizing efforts. Public health aims at analysing the health
challenges that population is facing then taking preventive actions to solve them. Further, public
health aims to provide quality of life to people by preventing and treating diseases. This is done
with the help of health promotion and social policies. From the above assessment on public
health, it is concluded that public health is an area of concerned and principles of public health at
national and international level helps in reducing the health issues as government, healthcare
institutions and society plays an important role in prevention of health diseases such as diabetes,
cancer, osteoporosis, obesity and cardiovascular disease. In order to prevent diseases sociological
perspective and social policy also played an important role as social policy effective formulation
and implementation helps to change individual behaviour and change in behaviour and habits of
individuals resultant in reduced health issues in the population. Further, health promotion is also
a way to prevent diseases and health promotion can be done through education, effective
communication and role modelling as spreading awareness in the population about health issues
and lifestyle helps in reducing the public health problem and resultant in welfare of society. As
from the case it is analysed that lifestyle of an individual is the main factor in health and
unhealthy lifestyle might leads to various health issues and diseases so in order to live healthy
life an individual have to change its lifestyle.

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