Health Promotion: Socioeconomic Factors and Government Strategies

This report delves into the multifaceted realm of health promotion, exploring the intricate interplay between socioeconomic factors and individual well-being. It meticulously examines how factors such as unemployment, disposable income, and access to healthcare facilities significantly influence health outcomes. The report further investigates the relevance of government sources in reporting health inequalities, highlighting the impact of reports like the Black Report and Acheson Report. It also scrutinizes the barriers to accessing healthcare, including low income, unemployment, and lack of insurance coverage. The analysis extends to the relationship between government strategies and smoking cessation programs, evaluating the roles of professionals in meeting government targets. The report also addresses health beliefs and the potential conflicts of interest with local industry, emphasizing the importance of providing relevant health information to the public. The report also covers a presentation on a health promotion campaign with the topic of physical activity and mental health.

HEALTH PROMOTION

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
1.1 Effect of Socio-economic influences on health.....................................................................1
1.2 Relevance of government sources in reporting on inequalities in health..............................2
1.3 Barriers to accessing Healthcare............................................................................................2
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................3
2.1 Relation Between Government Strategy and Smoking Cessation Program..........................3
2.2 Role of Professional to meet the Government Target............................................................4
2.3 Routine Needs to Quit Smoking............................................................................................5
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................6
3.1 Health beliefs related to theories of health behavior.............................................................6
3.2 Possible effects of potential conflicts with local industry on any health promotion.............6
3.3 Importance of providing relevant health related information to the public...........................7
TASK 4............................................................................................................................................8
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Health promotion can be defined as process of increasing health awareness among people
and increasing their control over themselves in order to improve their health. This assignment
focuses on influencing health in modern society as well as identify factors that influence regional
and national health promotion strategies. This assignment will day emphasis on understanding of
socio-economic factors influence on healthcare by discussing health inequalities and barriers in
accessing healthcare, discussion of health promotion models, discussion of factors that will
influence health promotions and conflicts of local industry on health promotions and lastly, a
presentation on health promotion campaign with topic “ Physical activity and mental health ”
will be discussed.
TASK 1
1.1 Effect of Socio-economic influences on health
There are various socio-economic factors that influences health of an individual. Factors
such as unemployment, disposable income, environment, lifestyle choices, access to healthcare
facilities,discrimination on health and various others. Disposable income of an individual give
rise to smoking as it becomes more and more accessible to them. Most of the employed people
suffer from stress a lot which influences them towards smoking tobacco as they think that
smoking tobacco relives them from stress. Another socio-economic factor that influences on
health is unemployment. It has been seen that unemployment and smoking are related to each
other. Unemployment causes stress and smoking is seen as stress reliever. Unemployment has a
drastic effect on an individual's health and due to that stress they get attracted towards smoking.
Smoking is a main cause of health degradation or death in many countries (Elgar and et.al 2016).
Due to stress, unemployment lifestyle of individual's as well as their families is also affected. As
a result those individuals adopt alcohol, smoking, drugs etc. within their lifestyle.
Another cause of this lifestyle and health degradation is the environment in which an
individual lives in. Tobacco is negatively dangerous for our society. Many people get influenced
for smoking seeing other enjoying smoking tobacco, which makes them smoke as well. This is
not only harmful for the individual's who smoke but for the people who lives with them they also
among people who indirectly inhales tobacco which influences their health. Poverty or
unemployment or lack of information also causes individuals to smoke as they see others and get
badly influenced by it. Education or information is not only linked with school or colleges
1

education or information but it is related to health education and information as well. Most of the
people who smoke does not even know the side effects of it, they are unaware of the thing that
how badly smoking affects an individual's health and degrade it continuously (Gertler and et.al
2015). All these factors are related to each other like lifestyle of an individual depends upon the
environment in which they lives, family income of an individual, employment, education,
information, stress etc. All these factors not only influence an individual and forces them to
smoke but this smoking tobacco constantly degrade their health.
1.2 Relevance of government sources in reporting on inequalities in health
There are various government sources where inequalities in health have been reported
such as black report, 1980. In this report department of health and and social security published a
report on health inequalities. In this report they said that even though welfare or health state has
changed and improved there are widespread inequalities. In this report it was found that the main
cause of this health inequalities was inequalities in economy. It was seen that the death rate and
health degradation rate in social class 5th was much more that death and health degradation rate
in social class 1st ( almost double). This report clearly showed that that ill-health and death was
unequally distributed among the overall population of Britain. Another report named Acheson
report that was published in 1998 titled inquiry into inequalities in health report. This report
emphases on greater health difference and their relationship with the social class (Kendig and
et.al 2017). This report suggested that there is more need to tackle economic and social
determinants of health inequalities, government policies should be worked upon to reduce these
health inequalities. Equality in mortality rate of higher and lower class should be equal. This
reports gave many recommendations and ways to reduce these inequalities related to health,
social and environmental factors. This report was released into a more favourable climate ad
these health inequalities were not that much prominent at the the time of report as it was at Black
report time. Both the reports had a huge political impact throughout the United Kingdom. These
reports forced the government to focus on health inequalities and take initiatives to reduce health
inequalities. The main target of government in regards to these reports was to target and abandon
these inequalities in a more modest was as possible
1.3 Barriers to accessing Healthcare
There are various barriers that an individuals has to face in accessing healthcare. These
barriers work as a hindrance in accessing healthcare facilities and even cause many other types
2

of burdens. One of the most prominent and main burden that an individual or their families face
is low income of patients or of their families which reduces their amount of disposable income
that they can utilize and spend on accessing healthcare. High cost of health care, no insurance
coverage makes it even more difficult for patients to utilize and access all the healthcare
facilities. Due to their lower expenditure income poor patients face lots of difficulties and
barriers in accessing healthcare facilities that they should get (Tyrrell and et.al 2016). First and
the foremost barriers for these low income families is affordability of healthcare, another barrier
is that they need to take away time form their responsibilities and work due to which their
salaries are deducted and due to this less budget for healthcare they are provided with degraded
quality of healthcare and sometimes their experience related to healthcare is even more poorer.
Another barrier for accessing healthcare for patients is unemployment. Unemployed
people or their families are the ones who suffer and faces difficulties in accessing healthcare
facilities a lot. Such kind of individuals most of the times try to avoid availing healthcare
facilities as they don't have the budget of availing any healthcare facilities. Due to this their
health is influences a lot as they fail to access healthcare. Some other factors that work as a
barrier in accessing healthcare is lack of availability of services or lack of insurance coverage.
Due to these reasons healthcare status of such individuals who faces these barriers have poor
health status, fail to avail proper medical or healthcare facilities, sometimes they even fail to
diagnosis any harmful disease. There is another barrier which is linked to unemployment,
poverty which is lifestyle of an individual which works as an hindrance in accessing healthcare
many times. Due to these conflicts regulations related to tobacco industry are also affecting.
TASK 2
2.1 Relation Between Government Strategy and Smoking Cessation Program
The number of smoker are increased in England and government is worried about the
health of the people. The smoking is causing deaths and sever diseases in the poor class and rich
people of country. For poor class it is hard to manage the treatment of high cost and this is
causing a lot of deaths in poor class community. The different strategies used by the government
to reduce the number of smokers in England. These strategies are consists of different methods to
reduce the number of smoker all over England (Berger and Mooney-Somers, 2016).
The government designed a plan to reduce the use of tobacco in next five years. These
strategies are- by stopping the promotion of the tobacco products in the country, this can help the
3

government to stop the publicity of product that promotes the use of tobacco products. By
making the tobacco less affordable, if the tobacco become less affordable than people who can't
afford it will not be able to buy it and this can help the government to reduce the number of
smokers. The effective regulation also can help to slow down the production of Cigarettes and
other tobacco products. Availability of less tobacco product in the market can reduce the number
of smokers. By promoting the rehabilitation program through the different policies the
government can help the people who wants to quit smoking. By making the strict law on
smoking in public area thew passive smoking can be prevented. By using different events and
programs to communicate the health awareness in the different communities across the England
(Lee, 2019).
The different smoking cessation programs are consisted of the same policies which are
considered by the government as strategy to reduce the habit of smoking in people. Stopping the
promotion can help the people who are working with smoking cessation program to quit
smoking. This can help them to keep the mind set to stay away from the smoking. By making the
tobacco less affordable can help these programs to reduced the number of smokers in the poor
class. The laws regulation related to the public place smoking can prevent the exposure to the
passive smoking that can help this programs to reduce the number of smoker and medical cases
which are result of chain smoking. This is how the strategies used by the government are useful
and helpful for the smoking cessation programs (Stead, Carroll and Lancaster, 2017).
2.2 Role of Professional to meet the Government Target
The role of the professionals is important to meet the government targets. The target of
the government is to reduce the number of smokers in the England and for this different
strategies are implemented by them. The goal of the government is to implement the policies and
methods to make the plan effective. The role of the professionals is to ensure the right
implementation of those policies and program to meet the targets. The programs of the
government are based on their strategies. To ensure the better implementation of the government
policies is the role of the professionals.
To implement the government strategy in better way the professional need to collects the
real data related to the smokers and smoking products. This data can help to implement the
policy or program as per need. This can improve the effectiveness of the government program.
For the stopping the promotion of the tobacco products the government need to have the data
4

related to the companies who are in production of the tobacco product. This data related to the
companies can help to implement the rule to stop the promotion. This data also allows the
government to change the policy related to the tax on the tobacco product to make it less
affordable.
The professionals can monitor the companies that are producing tobacco product to
provide this information to government to make effective regulation to reduce the selling of these
products. These professionals can provide the data related to the medical cases like diseases and
deaths which are caused by smoking. This data can be used in the government promotions to
make the people health aware and help them to quit smoking (Lancaster and Stead, 2017). This
details can make the government program more effective by promote the people to quit smoking.
For the process of the communicating process the delivery of effective data is important and that
can improvise the method used. This is how the professionals can help to implement the
government policies to meet the targets set by the government.
2.3 Routine Needs to Quit Smoking
The people who wants to quit smoking needs to follow the particular routine. This routine
is consists of different steps to ensure the person don't go back to smoking. To make a person
quit the smoking some information is need convey to make their decision strong to leave
smoking. This is a part of steps followed in the rehabilitation centers to make a person quit
smoking. To inform them frequently about the reasons to quit smoking. By this they can be
mentally prepared to quit the smoking. This reasons are health issue and quality of life, the
danger of disease like cancer of heart disorder like heart attack and other heart related problems.
By making them health aware can help to avoid the smoking. For the pregnant women it is
important to quit the smoking to deliver a healthy child. Every person around the smoker get
affected by the passive smoking. The smoking reduces the sense of smell and test in the chain
smokers. The money wasted a lot in smoking and in treatment for diseases that caused by
smoking (Passey and Sanson-Fisher, 2015). The five essential steps of quit smoking are- to
prepare the people mentally to quit smoking, ask for others support to help them to quit smoking,
guide them ways to ignore the urge of smoking and get a replacement of the nicotine to reduce
the urge of smoking and motivate them to quit the smoking by telling them the good results of
smoking free life. By following this in routine the habit of smoking can be avoided.
5

TASK 3
3.1 Health beliefs related to theories of health behaviour
There are various health beliefs that are related to theories of health behaviour. Few of
those theories will be explained with the help of one of the health behaviour theories. Theory that
will be used to relate health beliefs is health Belief Model. It is a psychological health behaviour
change model. This model is used to related all the health related behaviours especially related
to health services. According to this model individual's beliefs about health problems, self-
efficiency explains their engagement in health promoting behaviour (Davis and et.al 2015). This
model says that people will take healthcare more seriously if they feel that dangerous health
conditions can be avoided, recommendations given will help them to avoid negative health
conditions and if they feel that those recommendations will successfully affect their health
conditions. This theory says that people only takes health promotions seriously if they feel that it
is effective enough, will help them in identifying an health threat and the cue of actions will help
them to avoid any such health related threats.
There is another theory which explains health beliefs of people which is 'Theory of reasoned
action'. This theory aims at the relationship between attitude and behaviour within human
actions. It helps in understanding the situation and predict the way an individual will behave
based on their existing behaviour intentions and actions. As per this theory an individual will
engage himself based on the outcome that they expect as a result of their performance. Positive
or negative approach taken by an individual completely depends upon their intention of
performing a certain behaviour. This model says that an individual's attitude can be influences if
their beliefs are modified. So, According to both the theories it can be said that an individual's
beliefs influences them to engage themselves in an action or in any kind of health promoting
behaviour.
3.2 Possible effects of potential conflicts with local industry on any health promotion
There as various possible conflicts in all the local industry especially in tobacco industry
related to any health promotions. These conflicts work as a hindrance in promoting health in
order to improve people's health, living lifestyle etc. There has always been a conflict with local
industry related to health promotions (Hubley and Copeman, 2018). Most of the conflicts are
faced on health promotions 'side effects and stop selling of tobacco' by the local tobacco industry
as it affects their industry business in a drastic way. Stopping tobacco promotions will also affect
6

their sales of tobacco. Due to this most of the times tobacco industry create conflicts with health
promotions as it affects their business drastically. This health promotions make people aware of
the harmful effect this product has on the health of the individuals. As a result this hinders the
sales and profit margin of local tobacco industry. So, they create hindrance and conflicts in this
health promotions. Many times tobacco industry people try to spread wrong information such as
they says that there is no such study which proves that tobacco causes cancer. Which creates a
conflict between health promoters and tobacco industry (Rowlands and et.al 2015). Local
industry also says that no scientific study proves tobacco to be a harmful product which again
creates conflicts with health promoters.
3.3 Importance of providing relevant health related information to the public
It is important to provide health related information to the public as it is beneficial for
them to reduce any health problems and improve their lifestyle in a healthy way. Today lifestyle
of individuals, their financial condition, stress etc. is continuously degrading their health. Due to
this they are they are getting attracted towards negative things such as smoking tobacco, drinking
alcohol etc. which is they are constantly neglecting their health and are facing various health
issues. Most of the times people does not even know the side effects of the things they do such as
many individuals are unaware of side effects that alcohol and tobacco have on their health, how
it affects their health, how they themselves degrade their health (Green and et.al 2018). So it has
become a necessity to make people aware of health related information so that they can focus on
their health and improve their health conditions.
Communicating health related information to the public will help them to know about
non-communicable diseases which affects their health and how it is caused. These information
will also help them know the ways they can reduce harmful effects that are caused by tobacco,
alcohol etc. it has also been seen that consumption of tobacco, alcohol also affects the mental
condition of an individual. Many times people loose control over their body as a side effect of
such things. Health related information will help the public to know the ways their can improve
their health condition, get aware about their surroundings, harmful diseases that are spreading
and the ways they can improve their life style and live a stress free life as these factors affect an
individual's body.
People can be made aware of all the information technology equipments that they can use
to improve their health as well as with the help of such instruments they can themselves track
7

their health conditions. Most of the people are unaware of existence of such technologies as well
as with the benefit of these technology like use if IT is health can reduce medical errors,
strengthen patients healthy life etc. people today live a stressful life as they are unaware of such
things which can improve their health (Ahn, 2015). They does not know that healthcare does not
only improve an individual's health physically but it also improves their social, emotional and
mental health. So, it can be said that it is important to provide health related information to the
public.
TASK 4
Covered in Ppt.
CONCLUSION
From the above assignment it has been summarized that there are various socio-economic
factors that influences health of an individual and with some barriers that work as a hindrance in
accessing healthcare. In this different links between government strategies and smoking
cessation programme has been analysed as well and different models of health promotions have
also been analysed. It has also been analysed that there are various factors that affect health
promotions as well as create conflicts in health promotions for this possible conflicts with
industry had been discussed as well. For this lastly importance of provision of health related
promotions have also been discussed. For this importance of health, ways of promoting health
had been discussed.
8

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Ahn, S.J., 2015. Incorporating immersive virtual environments in health promotion campaigns:
A construal level theory approach. Health communication. 30(6). pp.545-556.
Berger, I. and Mooney-Somers, J., 2016. Smoking cessation programs for lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender, and intersex people: a content-based systematic review. Nicotine & Tobacco
Research. 19(12). pp.1408-1417.
Davis, R., and et.al 2015. Theories of behaviour and behaviour change across the social and
behavioural sciences: a scoping review. Health psychology review. 9(3). pp.323-344.
Elgar, F.J., and et.al 2016. Patterns of socioeconomic inequality in adolescent health differ
according to the measure of socioeconomic position. Social indicators research. 127(3).
pp.1169-1180.
Gertler, P., and et.al 2015. How does health promotion work? Evidence from the dirty business of
eliminating open defecation (No. w20997). National Bureau of Economic Research.
Green, S.H., and et.al 2018. Changes in School Competitive Food Environments after a Health
Promotion Campaign. Journal of School Health. 88(4). pp.281-288.
Hubley, J. and Copeman, J., 2018. Practical health promotion. John Wiley & Sons.
Kendig, H. and et.al 2017. Life course influences on later life health in China: childhood health
exposure and socioeconomic mediators during adulthood. SSM-population health. 3.
pp.795-802.
Lancaster, T. and Stead, L.F., 2017. Individual behavioural counselling for smoking
cessation. Cochrane database of systematic reviews, (3).
Lee, S.M., 2019. Perioperative smoking cessation programs should be standard-of-
care. Canadian Journal of Anesthesia/Journal canadien d'anesthésie, pp.1-2.
Passey, M.E. and Sanson-Fisher, R.W., 2015. Provision of antenatal smoking cessation support:
a survey with pregnant Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. Nicotine & Tobacco
Research. 17(6). pp.746-749.
Rowlands, G., and et.al 2015. Health literacy and the social determinants of health: a qualitative
model from adult learners. Health promotion international. 32(1). pp.130-138.
Stead, L.F., Carroll, A.J. and Lancaster, T., 2017. Group behaviour therapy programmes for
smoking cessation. Cochrane database of systematic reviews, (3).
Tyrrell, J., and et.al 2016. Height, body mass index, and socioeconomic status: mendelian
randomisation study in UK Biobank. Bmj. 352. p.i582.
9