What are specific actions that health professionals can take regardless of their practice area and site to promote population and community health?
should be at least 500 words, formatted, and cited in current APA style with support from at least 2 academic sources.
Specific Actions for General Health Professionals
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Specific Actions for General Health Professionals
Introduction
The primary outcome of interest for community solutions is impacting on health. Community health is the collective well-being of the community members. Besides just leaving in the same neighborhood, these individuals have similar health characteristics, ethnicities, and socioeconomic conditions (Sharma & Branscum, 2020). Healthcare professionals are often in the frontline to improve community health. Community programs prevent exposure to illnesses as well as improve access to preventive health care services. In that regard, this paper discusses the specific actions that health professionals can take regardless of their practice area and site to promote population and community health.
Healthcare workers can take certain actions both at the patient level or at the community level to promote population or community health regardless of their practice area. At the patient level, healthcare professionals may ask patients about social challenges in a sensitive and caring manner (Geniets et al., 2021). It is usually the first step in addressing usually hidden social issues. There is an increasing number of clinical tools to help healthcare professionals ask patients about problems such as food insecurity, lack of employment, and discrimination. Sensitive topics such as physical and sexual abuse are often less shared. All healthcare workers can investigate such issues if they can help in improving community health (Sharma & Branscum, 2020). Integrating information on social challenges into the medical record is also helpful in ensuring that the entire care team can take these considerations into account during care planning.
Additionally, any healthcare worker can refer patients to help them access the benefits and support services they need. Once a social diagnosis has been made, the healthcare worker (nurses, physicians, and social workers) can refer the patient to connect with various supportive resources within and beyond the health system (Sharma & Branscum, 2020). Some of these resources may include housing advocacy organizations, employment agencies, local groups, and others. They can also help their patients to access benefits or programs to which patients are entitled, such as tax credits, child and family benefits, home visitation programs.
At the community level, all health care workers can use clinical experience and research evidence to advocate for social change. Physicians and other health professionals have a powerful voice and can talk about the health impacts of social challenges to enhance policy changes and the creation of new policies to improve population and community health (Geniets et al., 2021). Healthcare workers can engage in activism by supporting social movements and political parties that advocate for the improvement of population health. For instance, those that advocate for affordable care and other things. Health workers can also engage in community needs assessment and health planning. Community-oriented primary care is a form of community diagnosis and community treatment (Geniets et al., 2021). Additionally, healthcare workers may be involved in the engagement and empowerment of the local community to tackle deeply rooted community challenges. All these are ways that healthcare workers can improve both population and community health.
Conclusion
Healthcare professionals can engage in population or community health improvement in several ways. Community programs prevent exposure to illnesses as well as improve access to preventive health care services. the first is that any healthcare worker who has good intentions for community health cask patients about social challenges in a sensitive and caring manner. It is usually the first step in addressing usually hidden social issues. This paper has also discussed other issues that healthcare can do regardless of their area of practice to improve community health.
References
Geniets, A., In O’Donovan, J., In Hakimi, L., & In Winters, N. (2021). Training for community health: Bridging the global healthcare gap. Oxford University Press.
Sharma, M., & Branscum, P. W. (2020). Introduction to community and public health. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley.