First and foremost, health promotion can be said to be the practice of facilitating individuals in improving and controlling their health. Its main aim is to nurture good wellbeing and health. Promoting health involves informing the population what to do to keep healthy, to discourse things within the community influencing health and get them supported and finally taking preventing measures rather than waiting to cure. All this geared towards improving health in an individual’s everyday lives. Health promotion embraces research, ideas, and approaches for it to be active and efficient (Smith, Crawford & Signal, 2016). In a broad context, the globe as a whole has laid strategies to help close health gaps in this generation through detailed information in the World Health Organization document. The governments are called upon to bring up immediate response on the health social determinants to achieve equity in health. Australia as a country has made tremendous efforts in promoting health and in closing the gaps by setting definite and precise targets and in stablishing building blocks required in place in addressing the disadvantage. The significant causes of inequality in health are limited access to primary health care, overcrowded housing with poor quality, less access to services essential to health and less access or no access to healthy and fresh food. For this to take place, the health sector and the Australian country as a whole has projected various initiatives in promoting health.
On 1st July 2014, the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE) launched formally the women want to know. This launch in 2014 was done to respond to the research indicating a large number of pregnant women had short of information or no information at all concerning alcohol consumption (CoombeR, Martino, Barbour, Mayshak & Miller, 2015). Among the few who had information on the consumption of alcohol, some of them either had distorted information or had conflicted messages. Every day fifteen people in Australia die, and the other four hundred and thirty get hospitalized due to alcohol. Children get harm as a result of this act as their caregivers leave some and pass through mistreatment. Apart from that, children can be indirectly affected by the consumption of alcohol during pregnancy that can cause lifetime harm. These preventable conditions are caused by a lack of awareness about Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Alcohol Guidelines.
As it is known, most women pay a visit to health centers or in short to health professionals to get advice on several issues when pregnant, such visits present opportunities to bring the topic on alcohol consumption and discuss with them to avoid alcohol or to completely abstain from it during the pregnancy period. This is, however, not wholly manageable as several medical professionals are not willing to offer advice to these women about consuming alcohol because of the assumptions that they already know the dangers of alcohol during the gestation period. Other reasons why professionals may ignore or fail to guide pregnant women is because they perceive the concerned could feel unease to discuss the matter, and even some are not certain of what to advice.
The aim of women wants to know initiative, is to deal with barriers through teaching the medical professionals on the side effects of consuming alcohol during the pregnancy period and also by showing the importance of giving this information to the patients they meet daily to make sure the women are well conversant. This is guided following the national health and medical research council Australian guideline to lessen the dangers of alcohol consumption. These guidelines were reorganized and revised in 2009 to suit maternal health and use of alcohol. The instructions denote that the safest option for pregnant women and those planning to be pregnant to avoid drinking alcohol (Brown, 2016).
The time the foundation for alcohol research and education was developing women want to know collaborated with other professional bodies in health such as, the Australian Medical Association (AMA), the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP), the Australian College Midwives (ACM), the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RANZCOG) and the Australian Medicare Locals Alliance (AMLA). The representatives of consumers from the maternity alliance were also consulted in developing this initiative. This campaign and movement are funded and supported by the Australian government through the health department. The women want to know movements and campaigns offer practical resources intending to promote medical professionals to allow and embrace these kinds of discussions with women while also endorsing qualified training modules and courses using the various professional bodies in health. These resources can be accessed freely, ordered, and can also be downloaded from the website. The courses in ongoing training and professional accreditation or e-learning are offered through Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Australian College of Midwives and Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. This campaign has been embraced and adopted by the ministry of health in New south wales and the department of health for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in the Northern territory. They have both designed resources for health professionals and women on alcohol during pregnancy. (Yusuf & Leeder, 2015).
The National health and medical research council’s Australian guidelines to reduce health risks from drinking alcohol postulates that alcohol consumption during the gestation period brings harm and complications to the growing fetus and also to the babies breastfeeding. This shows it is not safe for both the pregnant women and the breastfeeding to take alcohol to avoid endangering the babies and the fetus.
An evaluation carried independently on women want to know established that the campaign has made efforts and has succeeded in awareness creation on the alcohol guidelines amid specialists and professionals. There was also crucial evidence showing the medical professionals have picked the initiative with momentum and have positive attitudes while discussing the consumption of alcohol with pregnant mothers. The recommendation by the evaluation was that the urge shown by pregnant women to know about alcohol use in their gestation period should be seen as an opportunity to spread and raise awareness amongst the large population in the society. The evaluation also continued to show that the shortcomings are noticeable and to start with are the unlimited funds geared towards the project together with less continuity of the initiative. The evaluation report also hence proposes that the ongoing women want to know project promotion should be elevated to increase the uptake by investing more resources towards the initiative and also through online training (Crawford?Williams, Fielder, Mikocka?Walus & Esterman, 2015).
There may be some other factors that slow or fastens the awareness or spread of information to the targeted people, and in this case, we have pregnant women. These we can generally refer to them as social determinants. Australia being geographically big, may not uniformly act accordingly to the whole population. The environment, behaviors, age, availability of resources, and so on varies from one place to another. For example, the exposure a woman has in urban places cannot be compared to those in marginalized rural areas. Many of the drivers that are crucial health exist in our daily working conditions that are the settings we develop, reside, labor, and age. In other words, we may say the health of an individual is influenced by the choices he or she makes. For example, there are consequences if one drinks alcohol, get immunized or not, or if someone smokes. Dynamics such as education, social support, income, power, and so on action to undermine or strengthen a person’s or community’s health.
Back in our initiative, women want to know, the reach of information and awareness will vary, and these social factors will determine this. If a woman, for instance, has a low level of education, she will be more deprived of information than the educated one. The educated one will be more convinced and understand better health caution, let’s say, for example, during pregnancy. The educated is more enlightened even to have that desire to consult with the health professional. Social support is also critical. If an expectant woman receives support from the society like from the family members, that woman will strive to keep the future health, including avoiding alcohol. But if she does not receive that appreciation, the likelihood is that she may indulge in other activities to release her stress (Brown, Katscherian, Spickett, Maycock & Hendrie, 2017). Access to health centers also plays a significant role in defining a person’s health. An expectant woman who is limited to health facilities is more at the risk of endangering the infant. Accessibility may be caused by the unavailability of health centers or the unavailability of funds to access them. It is then the call of the Australian government to respond to ensuring total and equal health care.
No researched work has been done to establish safe levels for alcohol consumption and also no level of consuming alcohol when pregnant that ensures no damage to the fetus. Being a teratogen, alcohol can affect the fetus development. Acetaldehyde, together with alcohol, damages fetal cells developing and weaken blood flow, which may lead to hypoxia. Consuming alcohol during pregnancy period can lead to stillbirth, commonly referred to as miscarriage, and may also hinder in milk production or lactation and abnormal behaviors by the infant. To the children, exposure to alcohol in utero leads to Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) comprising congenital disabilities, premature births, growth restriction, brain damage, delay in development and behavioral, social, cognitive and emotional deficits. (Avery et al., 2016). The behavioral and social difficulties linked to exposure of alcohol becomes more ostensible. These behavioral and intellectual individualities endangered due to alcohol exposure during pregnancy include aggression, impulsivity, challenges in social interaction, and inattention.
With the caring and loving nature of women, they are willing to abstain and avoid alcohol consumption when and only if they are offered advice. The health professionals, therefore, have a significant role to play in influencing the women positively to make choices on alcohol consumption during pregnancy, and this will help them give birth to bouncing healthy babies (Chan et al., Gullo2016). The most effective way to discuss matters alcohol consumption is by asking all pregnant women and also all women that are of age to bear children issues concerning their status on alcohol usage. This is significant because of all the pregnancies; fifty percent are unplanned. The advice to give all women as a medical professional is that to say no to alcohol during pregnancy, and no quantity of alcohol can be said to be safe to the developing fetus. For women who might have consumed alcohol during the gestation or pregnant period, the advice should be as the following; The extent of endangering the fetus is tough to make the prediction and the harm caused can be little if the consumed alcohol is in small amounts, putting an end to drinking will reduce the damage to the fetus and any related issues on development to the fetus should be discussed by health professional (Elliott, 2015).
Conclusion
The women want to know the campaign inspires the health professionals to converse on pregnancy and alcohol regularly while offering consistent advice with the National Health and Medical Research Councils Australian Guidelines to Reduce Health Risks from Drinking alcohol. This project entails two key modules; Resources to fund and sustain health professionals in discussing alcohol consumption and women pregnancy and accredited course in training health professionals to instill information and skills to facilitate them deal with issues to do with pregnancy and alcohol use. The initiative already has ascribed training modules with information on ways which to discuss pregnancy and use of alcohol, harms of alcohol consumption during pregnancy, assessing woman’s drinking and the advice to offer and finally who to refer to who. The Australian government should liaise with the health department in ensuring no region disparities in terms of resource allocation to ensure individuals have access to health attention. The social inequalities should be addressed, and equal opportunities presented to the citizens of Australia. The marginalized women in disadvantaged areas should be given a balanced position to receive information to continue reducing abnormal births and to avoid miscarriages due to alcohol or any other drug.
References
Avery, M. R., Droste, N., Giorgi, C., Ferguson, A., Martino, F., Coomber, K., & Miller, P. (2016). Mechanisms of influence: alcohol industry submissions to the inquiry into fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. Drug and alcohol review, 35(6), 665-672.
Brown, A. (2016). What do women want? Lessons for breastfeeding promotion and education. Breastfeeding Medicine, 11(3), 102-110.
Brown, H., Katscherian, D., Spickett, J., Maycock, B., & Hendrie, D. (2017). Health Impact Assessment Guidelines.
Chan, G. C., Leung, J. K., Quinn, C., Connor, J. P., Hides, L., Gullo, M. J., … & Hall, W. D. (2016). The trend in alcohol use in Australia for over 13 years: has there been a trend reversal? BMC public health, 16(1), 1070.
Coomber, K., Martino, F., Barbour, I. R., Mayshak, R., & Miller, P. G. (2015). Do consumers ‘Get the facts’? A survey of alcohol warning label recognition in Australia. BMC public health, 15(1), 816.
Crawford?Williams, F., Fielder, A., Mikocka?Walus, A., & Esterman, A. (2015). A critical review of public health interventions aimed at reducing alcohol consumption and increasing knowledge among pregnant women. Drug and alcohol review, 34(2), 154-161.
Elliott, E. J. (2015). Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders in Australia—the future is prevention. Public Health Res Pract, 25(2), e2521516.
Smith, J. A., Crawford, G., & Signal, L. (2016). The case of national health promotion policy in Australia: where to now? Health Promotion Journal of Australia, 27(1), 61-65.
Yusuf, F., & Leeder, S. R. (2015). Making sense of alcohol consumption data in Australia. Medical Journal of Australia, 203(3), 128-130.
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