Analyzing Issues in Health and Human Services: Public Awareness

This essay identifies the lack of public awareness as a critical issue in the health and human services sector, particularly its impact on healthcare equality and disparities in rural areas and among those with low educational attainment. It reflects on the author's core values of better healthcare, enga...Read More

Running head: ISSUES IN HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
Issues in health and human services
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1ISSUES IN HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
Issue
There are many issues identified in the health and human service sector. As a manager
the issue that is most important is the lack of public awareness of the illness. This issue is
important personally as a manger because poor public health awareness creates disparity in
health care delivery. Areas with low health awareness are one with high mortality rates. People
in rural areas and with low educational attainment lack health awareness. Due to poor awareness
they limitedly access the health resources, insurance coverage, do not have healthy eating and
living skills. In these sections of society, there is high prevalence of chronic conditions
(Akinboro et al., 2016). It implies the responsibility of the health and human service manger to
enhance the public health awareness and promote health care equality.
Reflection on values
My core values are better health care, engaged patients and communities, better patient
experiences, improved health literacy and health care equality. However, the issue of the poor
public health awareness challenges personal beliefs. It is because people with low health literacy
are less likely to follow the treatment instructions, and highly likely to be re-hospitalised and less
likely to seek preventive care during epidemics (Mantwill et al., 2015). People from different
cultural, racial and ethnic background have different health values and beliefs. This leads to
conflict of values. For instance, in Iranian cultures, women have poor access to reproductive
health care and belief in preserving the girl’s virginity. Family beliefs shape the girls’ attitude
towards the reproductive related issues. Such beliefs are attributes to poor health awareness
(Seymour, 2018). Such health beliefs and values are challenging to the personal beliefs of equal
access to reproductive health care for men and women.

2ISSUES IN HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
Examining issue- Ethical, Theoretical and conceptual framework
Examining the issue from the ethical perspective, that is moral principles, theories, and
conceptual frameworks, the issue of conflict between personal values and people’s health values
is challenging. Diversity of ethical issues arises due to unfamiliar cultural norms of public.
Changing the health beliefs, literacy and attitudes of people as per personal values will breach
the principle of respect for persons, justice, beneficence and non-maleficence. It will favour the
consequentialist theory that is end based. It will not favour the virtue ethics, religious ethics,
deontological (duty-based) theories, due to disease demographics, and different professional
expectations (Barnard et al., 2011). Examining from the legal perspective, health insurances can
reduce the health disparity as well as introduce the new ones. It does not ensure the equity but
improves the access to health care by providing awareness to people. Although, it is acceptable
as per law of Canada, it may be objectionable from Islamic law perspective (Kasule, 2012).
Solution
There is a need of recognising the ethical tensions and pursue its root. To decrease the
rate of poor public awareness, there is a need of rigorous awareness campaigns. It will help
people change the perspective of health and its related beliefs and attitude. It will lead to increase
in access to health services, improve health literacy, and reduce health disparity (Proctor &
Hayes, 2017). As a manager of the health and human services, I would like to adopt the free
market tools of private insurance. It will help increase the efficiency and quality of the
government as well as the cooperative community insurance. It will help people with low
socioeconomic status to gain health literacy by campaigns and access preventive or screening
services on time (Kasule, 2012). Conflicts of values will be resolved by deciding which values

3ISSUES IN HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
takes priority in a given situation and ways to uphold them. It will help maintain the ethical
equity (Little, 2018).

4ISSUES IN HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
References
Akinboro, O., Ottenbacher, A., Martin, M., Harrison, R., James, T., Martin, E., ... & Cardarelli,
K. (2016). Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health and Health Care: an Assessment and
Analysis of the Awareness and Perceptions of Public Health Workers Implementing a
Statewide Community Transformation Grant in Texas. Journal of racial and ethnic
health disparities, 3(1), 46-54.
Barnard, D., Bui, T. T., Chase, J., Jones, E., Loeliger, S., Velji, A., & White, M. T. (2011).
Ethical issues in global health education. Global health training in graduate medical
education: A guidebook, 25-43.
Kasule, O. H. K. (2012). Health insurance and the ethical issue of equity. Journal of Taibah
University Medical Sciences, 7(2), 61-68.
Little, D. (2018). The paradox of wealth and poverty: Mapping the ethical dilemmas of global
development. Routledge.
Mantwill, S., Monestel-Umaña, S., & Schulz, P. J. (2015). The relationship between health
literacy and health disparities: a systematic review. PLoS One, 10(12), e0145455.
Proctor, G., & Hayes, C. (2017). Counselling for Depression: a response to counselling
education in the twenty-first century. Ethical conflicts for a counselling approach
operating within a medicalised bureaucratic health service. British Journal of Guidance
& Counselling, 45(4), 417-426.
Seymour, J. (2018). The Impact of Public Health Awareness Campaigns on the Awareness and
Quality of Palliative Care. Journal of palliative medicine, 21(S1), S-30.

5ISSUES IN HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES