Working Together for Health

Efforts to improve public health occur around the world every day. However, simply attempting to fix a problem without acknowledging, and respecting, the relationship between culture and health is not likely to have long-term success.

Successful interventions, such as those in the case studies presented in your resources, demonstrate organizational collaboration. They also highlight the value of cultural relativism to improve population health outcomes. Working for the people (and with the people) can make an important impact on health.

To prepare for this Discussion, review Chapter 2, "Communities Working to Achieve Health Equity," in the Promoting Health Equity document from Week 2. Select one case study to profile in your discussion. How do the key concepts, addressed in this week's Learning Resources, relate to the case study you selected?

1. Briefly describe the population and health issue addressed in the case study.

2. In what way did cultural beliefs and behaviors contribute to the health issue in these case studies?

3. Which public health (or other) groups intervened, and how did they cooperate to improve health for this population?

4. What measures did the organization take to ensure they respected the dignity of the individuals and their culture?

5. How does this case study relate to our class resources addressing culture and collaboration?

Public and Global Health Essentials

• Chapter 11, "Working together to improve global health"

Around the world professionals from numerous organizations rely on others to achieve their public health goals. This chapter stresses global cooperation, partnerships and collaborations vital to addressing health issues

For this discussion, I will access the overall health and identify key issues in Garland County, Arkansas. According to County Health Rankings of 2017, in the area of health outcomes Garland County, Arkansas ranked 44 out of 75 counties. When reviewing national and state results, Arkansas exceeded the U.S. median in all categories of health outcomes. For the health factors summary, they ranked much lower coming in at 28. In the category of health behaviors, 25% of adult Arkansans are smokers and 34% are obese. Both of these percentages are above national averages.

Referring back to the topic of my previous discussion, the number of diagnosed sexually transmitted diseases was almost twice as many as the national average and the teen birth rate almost doubled the national average. In the category of clinical care Arkansas is near equal or slightly lower than national averages. Social and economic factors also rank fairly close to the national averages. Overall physical environment factors are no different than the national averages. In my opinion, Arkansas is a fairly clean and comfortable place to live.

After considering these statistics, I can answer the opening question of this discussion. "How healthy is your community?" Not very! As a health care provider who specializes in cardiovascular care, the number of obese, diabetic, non-compliant patients is overwhelming. Our community is heavily populated with vulnerable patients.

Being a retirement community, most of our patients are elderly. Of those patients, several have previously mentioned pre-existing conditions and/or unhealthy habits, such as long-term smoking and sedentary lifestyles that are high risk factors for heart disease. Even for those that do not meet the criteria for the vulnerable population present with such conditions and lifestyle patterns.

One public health initiative to better serve our vulnerable population is age-friendly communities. These communities are designed to promote health aging by providing "affordable housing, safe outdoor spaces and built environments conducive to active living, inexpensive and convenient transportation options, opportunities for social participation and community leadership, and accessible health and wellness services" (Dilip, Blazer, Buckwalter, Cassidy, Fishman, Gwyther, Levin, Phillipson, Rao, Schmeding, Vega, Avanzino, Glorioso, & Feather, 2016).

The WHO has a global age-friendly community network geared towards meeting the needs of the elderly (Dilip, Blazer, Buckwalter, Cassidy, Fishman, Gwyther, Levin, Phillipson, Rao, Schmeding, Vega, Avanzino, Glorioso, & Feather, 2016). I think our community and several others would greatly benefit from such establishments. When people are surrounded by healthy living, they tend to begin living healthy. For example, people who consistently workout in groups tend to continue working out. Individuals who are not held to such accountability tend to fall off.