TOPIC: AN INTEGRATED HEALTH PROMOTION APPROACH TO A SPECIFIC HEALTH ISSUE
Instructions -
Purpose: To demonstrate understanding of the 'healthy settings' and 'health in all policies' approaches in an integrated health promotion strategy, and consider challenges to applying them in practice.
Essay question: Are the 'healthy settings' and a 'health in all policies' approaches useful to assist a population sub-group - that tends to experience poorer health in the Australian context - to achieve an important health goal?
Approaching the task: Due to a range of factors, several population groups in Australia have poorer health than the general population, name
- Indigenous Australians
- people living in rural and remote areas
- people living in socioeconomically ?disadvantaged communities
- veterans
- prisoners
- people born overseas (AIHW, 2016).
From among these population groups, select the one of most interest to you and relevance to your professional work. As integrated health promotion can be highly context specific, it is recommended that you focus on a sub-population within the broader population group you choose. For example, it may be women prisoners in rural Victorian jails, or South Sudanese refugees aged 12-18 years who have recently- arrived in Melbourne, or older Indigenous Australians living in Gippsland.
Then, identify a health goal that would be relevant to your chosen sub-population - for example, for the selected sub-population to develop more regular participation in physical activity; be non-smokers; increase social connectedness; sustain routine habits that help them to optimally manage a chronic condition (mental or physical).
In your essay, make sure these points are covered:
a) Brief description of the selected population sub-group and health goal
b) How "integrated health promotion", "healthy settings" and "health in all policies" are defined and what they mean.
c) How and why you would use a "healthy settings" approach as part of an integrated health promotion strategy to help achieve the health goal.
d) How and why you would use a "health in all policies" approach as part of an integrated health promotion strategy to help achieve the health goal.
e) How "healthy settings" and "health in all policies" approaches work in support of each other in an integrated health promotion strategy.
Make sure your work is informed by evidence from research published in text books, journal papers and other sources (eg. government reports, evaluation studies), which should be used to support your explanations.
Reference: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2016). Priority population groups.
Resources: Start by reviewing the prescribed and other readings for this subject (refer to the Reading List on LMS). Then, search high-quality information sources - including peer reviewed journal articles - to locate further materials relevant to your focus. Use online library catalogues and databases and if you can, visit the library to locate textbooks. Talk to your peers to find out how they are approaching the assignment and feel free to contact Library staff or the subject teaching staff for advice.