Health Policy, Stigma In Chronic Illness, Indigenous Health Risks, And Disability

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The lecture talks about the definition of policy, its importance and its impacts on society. The policy is a statement about an important issue that has to be controlled under any circumstances. The policy defines a pathway or framework that is needed to achieve any goal or landmark of success. It acts as a guiding frame of references and ensures uniformity and consistency with clarifying functions and responsibilities. Policies also assist in performance of the strategy to establish its accountability. Policies are of different types within which, public health policy is important as it deals with the health of the community rather than the individual. For example the public health policy for Tobacco reduction. This lecture also talks about institutionalization and deinstitutionalization. Stigma, prejudice, shame, discrimination, stereotype and effect of these on the mental health is also been discussed.

Reading 1

This reading discusses about some of the definitions of policy. One of which defines the policy as a process by which government defines its political vision and translates them into different programs and actions to change the respective field. The modern health policy structure has been discussed which is mainly driven due to the private-public partnership with an investment made by philanthropic trusts. Further, the structure and functioning of the Australian health system has been discussed which is based on the federal structure and depends on the public health policy.

To define the policies of Australian healthcare, four case studies has been presented in the reading and the role of Australian Bureau of statistics (ABS) and Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) has  been discussed. These case studies were on breast cancer screening, needle –syringe programs, oral health and UN’s global health.

Reading 2

The reading two discusses about the chronic illness and the stigma associated with it. In recent world, millions of people are suffering from chronic disorders, within which many may feel stigmatized due to their chronic illness. Total 447 Upon accepting or denying the common presented question, they were presented with a set of question to determine the other aspect of their disorder. Within these, 184 students accepted that they were living with chronic illness. Internalized stigma was measured based on The HIV stigma scale, however 6 more factors were added to it. Students had to answer within a scale of 5 (strongly agree to strongly disagree) and finally the obtained result was obtained by averaging the 11 (5 from HIV scale and 6 from this scale) items.

Implications for MY future practice as a…

This reading 1 primarily focuses on the health policies of Australia and discuses different aspects of it. With the help of four important case studies, the implication of these policies has been mentioned in the reading that is going to help me for my future research aspects. On the other hand reading 2 discuses about the stigma in chronic illness discuses interventions to remove these prejudice, discrimination and stigma from the society against the people suffering from chronic illness. The study from this reading is going to help me understand the stigma on a practical basis in future.

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The lecture of week seven discusses about the indigenous and aboriginals of Australia and discusses about their health complications and risk of acquiring diseases. The aboriginal population is predominant in the south Australia and their health complications are different from that of the indigenous population predominant in the remote area of north Australia. This lecture discusses about the health risks that the aboriginals and indigenous population of Australia suffers. for indigenous population, the mortality rate is double than that of the non-indigenous population and they are always at a high health risk due to addiction to smoke, alcohol and many more. On the other hand a research program is been discussed in which the researchers have planned to discuss the problems and focuses on its solution.

Reading 1

The reading one of week, seven discusses about a project namely ‘managing two worlds together’. The project is dedicated for the aboriginal patients from rural and remote south Australia and discusses about the needs and improvements that have to be done for the quality healthcare of such people. This project has two stages in which the stage is focuses on the problem. The stage 1 discusses about four problems and reports were divided in six documents. These were- project report, community summary, report on admission and costs, perspective of staff on the care, experience of patients about the care and aboriginal patients journey. The second stage focuses on the solution to this problems that consists of set of actions of research project. It focuses on the improvement of the healthcare journey for aboriginals based on the existing healthcare practice.

Reading 2

Reading two discusses about the indigenous Australians and describes the key comparative healthcare indicators for them. It also describes the key health risk exposures and explains the importance of social determinants framework to understand the Australian indigenous people and their need. The Australian indigenous people mostly live in the north Australia and maximum population of them resides in the remote locations. According to the reading, the infant mortality rate in indigenous people is approximately double than the non-indigenous people. It also discusses about the health risk and states that these people are always at higher risk due to alcohol, smoking and other addictions than the non-indigenous population. This lecture discusses about the reason of high ESRD in this population and finds that due to high blood pressure, higher rate of diabetes, low birth weight and obesity they are at health risk always.

Implications for MY future practice as a…

The future implication of this study is also important, as it is important to understand the health complications of aboriginals and indigenous people of Australia. The location and the history of their population induces different factors that affects their health negatively. These readings provide the factors that are the reason due to which these health complications occurs. Knowledge of these factors will help me to provide such population with quality care in future.

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The lecture of week eight discusses about disability and its different aspects. The lecture discusses about the effect of society on disability. At first, the lecture discusses about the effect of language on the social health and what role health professionals has to perform when language emerges as a barrier. disability is a social construct and does not has any proper definition as it completely depend upon the influences of the society. It also discusses about the types of society and its effect on the mental state of the disabled person.

Further, it discusses about the UNCRPD purpose of convention to promote and protect the equal right to live and enjoy all the fundamental freedom a disabled person should get and the respect and inherent dignity they deserve.

Reading 1

This reading discusses about the future improvement for the healthcare of people with disability and to facilitate it they carried out a systematic review. The researchers wanted to find out that did the healthcare professions were the reason behind the stigmatized behavior of the patients with disability or not. The conducted 30 studies and these studies were cross sectional self-report studies of moderate quality. They assessed three dimensions of stigmatized attitude such as cognitive, behavioral and affective dimensions. Further after researching about different interventions about the healthcare of disabled people few interventions was found to be effective. The first intervention was anti-stigma intervention for mainstream healthcare professional in which the professional will be taught about the treatment procedure for the disabled. The second intervention was to find out the facts that affects the mental health of the disabled and induces stigma. Third intervention is to monitor the stigmatic behavior of healthcare professional to provide equal rights of treatment to disabled people.

Reading 2

The second reading discuss about the attitude of healthcare professionals and its effect on the fair evaluations and equalities in healthcare. Attitude defines the mentality of the person and in this situation; a biasness prevails in spite of the social belief and intellectual thoughts. Therefore, it is important for the professional to leave aside his intrinsic beliefs and provide the disabled person with the healthcare he deserves. It is important to focus on the start of intervention rather than focusing on the duration of the intervention. According to the reading, this attitude can be helpful to understand the need of the patient. Finally, such interventions should be a part of the curriculum so that healthcare professional gets proper time to internalize these equalities from commencement of their journey.

Implications for MY future practice as a…

These readings are helpful for my future implications as these helped me toi understand the positive attitude a healthcare professional should possess while providing healthcare to a disabled patient. Disability is a social construct and therefore people never talks about it openly. they merely think about the problems a disabled person goes through. However, at the time of implication, they continue their intrinsic behavior, that induces stigma and discrimination in the head of disabled. the reading one is going to help me with the interventions to understand the level of stigma, a patient is going through and the reading two will help me to understand the positive attitude a healthcare professional should bear.

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The lecture of week 9 is completely based on concept of medicalization and social aspect of healthcare. This is an important concept of sociological discussion of medicine. The author of the paper wanted to reassess the role of this concept in the modern society and in the process describes the archaeology of the concept and discusses its development and different ways through which it has been used.

The lecture further discusses about the social construction of illness. This social constructionism is a theoretical context that defines the cultural and historical aspects of different phenomenon of illness. further it discusses the key findings and origin of constructionism.

Reading 1

The concept of medicalization is widely used in the sociological terms and focuses on defining several health implications because of social factors. It is a process of making medicines and the labels healthy and ill relevant to human existence. While many of the health experts as well as sociologists have found the concept of medicalization useful, many of them have found it critical. Few critics have named this concept as irrelevant, other have marked it as its mistakes. However, the continuous use of this term by sociologists, historians and physicians describes the importance of this concept in identification, describing, understand, explain and question the medical activity. The reading also provides arguments according to which, biomedicalization and pharmaceuticalization cannot be used as an alternative for medicalization. This concept helps the physicians to view the disease with a social aspect, however, the concept did not attack on the use of medicines in general.

Reading 2

Social construction of illness is one the major research topics in medical sociology nowadays pillars of the construction. The first overarching finding demonstrates that some of the illness is comes with social or cultural meanings and these illness are not derives from the nature directly. Therefore, this aspect shapes the response of the society to this illness, as they are the only one who influences this in the society. Second finding demonstrates that all chronic illness are constructed socially and this construction happens at the experiential level. After that, it is on the individual to find the ways to understand the disease or find a way to live with it. Third factors states that nature does not provide the knowledge about the disease and the knowledge is developed after some experience or research. Therefore, this concept provides a different approach to the deterministic approaches of medicine and help to make policies regarding the illness.

Implications for MY future practice as a…

These readings from week 9 is going to help me with the different approaches of healthcare and its implications in modern day medicine. The concept of medicalization is going to help me with the understanding of the social factor of illness. It will be useful to draw attention to different social causes of illness. On the other hand, social constructionist approach is going to help with study of different diseases with a perspective of sociological reason for it. This concept has several aspect for research and therefore, understanding of it is going to help me for further understand about it in future.

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