National Women Health Policy 2010 In Australia: Analysis And Summary

Choice of Policy

Discuss about the Health Policy for National Women Health Policy.

The policy chosen for the assignment is National Women Health Policy 2010 in Australia. The policy is proposed for the benefit of health services that need to be provided to the modern women who face a lot of difficulties in expressing themselves and accessing the health care for a variety of disease that affect quality life of women in Australia. This policy is proposed with a plan period of 20 years and therefore proposes both governmental and personal initiatives for helping every woman of all age cohorts including the old age issues and have successfully being able to handle the recent crisis in a better way.

This policy is chosen because it has been seen to fulfil all the important criteria that is required from the assignment because a substantial part of the assignment has been covering the various vulnerable disorders and the diseases that attack women at every cohort (Haber et al., 2015). This is including the old age and supports and the barriers that women face while trying to access healthcare supports. Not only inaccessibility, it also portrays the various social determinants that prevent the women or become a barrier to correct healthcare services of all age (Hawkes et al., 2016). This policy is found to be absolutely apt as it discusses various potential diseases that affect them at various ages along with statistical data backed up for it (Birkland, 2014).

A very impressive fact about the policy is that it had provided a clear overview of each and every aspect that it had wanted to discuss (Anderson, 2014). By the sentence, it is meant that it had clearly depicted the entire policy concerns and the interventions clearly in six important chapters and therefore there had been no source of confusion among the readers and policy supporters (Koduah, Agyepong & van Dijk, 2016). This is because they van clearly get to understand the problems that the modern women face without any difficulty. There are six important chapters after a brief overview of the policy. This is indeed found to be helpful as the readers get a brief idea what they are going to read in the coming pages or it can also provide a quick idea to those who are finding a correct policy to look over the aged people (Fafard, 2015). The first chapter usually consists of the details of the discussions and the forum meetings and the conferences that had leas to the successful publication of the policy thereby providing a derailed background of the policy importance. The second chapter mainly consists of the results found from several studies and qualitative researches conducted for the policy. This is a very important chapter as it mainly consists of the issues that women face and will face in the next 20 years like chronic health diseases, risk factors, mental health issues, sexual and reproductive wellbeing an almost important of all agingin prevention criteria is also mentioned (Bulmer, 2015). The third chapter mainly deals with the various determinants that often result in the incidence of the diseases and discusses issues on the social and economic front along with discussions and the challenges faced in every field. Chapter four deals with the action plan in order to solve the issues. Governmental actions are evaluated along with proposal of new plans. This indicated that political aspects are also included (Hansen, Seybolt & Sundeen, 2014). Chapter five mainly focuses on the social determinants resulting in the disorders. Chapter six deal with the broader goals that mainly aim in attending the inequality issues, governmental initiatives and others. Further developmental plan is also proposed. Therefore, from this part, one can get a very clear idea about what to expect from the policy. A very interesting fact noticed here is that the proposer of the policy has a clear-cut approach that invites no criticism of missing out important arenas (Hajifathalian et al., 2015). Separating and classifying the different topics in different chapters have provided the viewers about what to expect from each chapter (Onega et al., 2014). This policy is easy to apprehend as the readers can jump to nay chapter of interest without trying to find his or her concern in a particular arena. This crystal-clear approach should be maintained by each and every health policy rather than having continuous paragraphs with no proper headings and differentiation in topics thereby giving a mixed overview with random issues and interventions. Moreover, another very food perspective noticed here is that the policy is made very easy to read for all the readers even those who are not very accustomed with scientific and health terms. Therefore, it is not difficult for those who are academically less privileged and finds it interesting and at the same time easy to read and review it and understand what it wants to convey to modern day women (Coleman. 2014).

Reason for Policy Being Selected

While looking into the first chapter of the policy, one can find out a clear explanation of the history that provided the background for the introduction of the policy in the year 2010. The previous policy was mainly formed in the year 1989 which were proposed after the nation realised that the women need a special policy. This policy was mainly aimed at the improvement of the health and wellbeing of the of all the women in Australia that mainly targeted of attending the risks associated with women and making the healthcare sector more specialised to meet their needs. The policy identified some of the very important issues like the reproductive health, sexuality, health of aging women, emotional and mental health and also sex role stereotyping and many others. The policy maker at that time were capable of identifying key areas where action they should have taken like improvement of health services, provision of more health information, conduct researches and data collection from them, training of different health care providers and so on. Here one can see, that already the main foundations of the current policy was already laid in the year 1989 and therefore the issues which the current policy has been objectifying are the same issues that had also bothered the women from a very early time that 1989 policy had already resulted in a study called the Australian longitudinal study that had been landmark based on the population based survey which continued for about 20 years and included the examination of about 40,000 women all over the nation. The survey had formed the main background for the introduction of the new policy in the year 2010. Participants have been surveyed for more than about four times in the last 12 years to gather important information about their needs, requirements and their feeling about the health systems along with the changes that require to be met. This is because with the growing changes in the mental and physical requirements of every generation with the social and economic changes, it had become important to introduce a new policy with the results of the survey constructed as a part of the 1989 policy. The consultation process of the 2010 policy was mainly laid after the release of the paper called the Developing a Women’s Health Policy for Australia: Setting the Scene by the Minister for Health and Ageing, the Hon Nicola Roxon MP. Based on the paper, a number of women health organisation were called for meetings and conferences all over the country in not only major states but also in minor states and even in rural areas like Alice Springs, Bendigo, Cairns, Fitzroy Crossing, Launceston, Port Augusta and Taree. Thereby one can see here that the policy had been established only after thorough research that had been conducted over the entire nation. Therefore, it had included the feelings and demands of every woman from all background. Therefore, the success of the policy can already been estimated as it covered all the issues that could have been a concern to any of the women. Gender equity, health equity, age appropriate information and services for women belonging to different age category, focusing on preventive strategies, evidence based services, developing goals for the women, identifying key issues were discussed in brief giving the readers the main subjects of discussion However, only one point that is noticed here is that the key issues identified here have been discussed in the chapter one has again been discussed inn chapter two in details. So, in this case it becomes repetitive and thereby had increased the length of the policy paper in whole. The reader may find it repetitive when going through the chapter two which is a negative aspect of it. The policy part containing the key issues identified should have included the data from the chapter one to be written together in chapter two and therefore it could have maintained the clarity of the paper in better terms.

Concise Summary of the Health Policy

While analysing chapter two, one can find a detailed evaluation of the different types of diseases and disorders that have intricately associated with different age groups of different regions and has been able to give us an overview of the changes that have occurred over the years. Through detailed study it has been shown that the women who reported that they are suffering from ill health are usually of increased age and those having the fittest health are between the age group of 25 to 34. Then the rate of mortality increases with age and shows that the most vulnerable disease that causes mortality in the highest number is the cardiovascular diseases and blood vessel disorders although the rate of percentage has been seen to fall by a 76%. The policy makers have indeed gone through extensive research and this is evident from the table that they have provided showing the death of women in each and every age and exactly what type of disease affect these individuals in that particular age. The table is very informative and thereby helps to make the readers aware about the disease and the particular age at which the disease is most vulnerable. From the table, reader can get information like women are most prone of cancers and tumours within the age cohort of 45 to 64 years. Not only this by utilising the ‘disability adjusted life year’ called the DALY, policy makers have also estimated the diseases burden faced by the females and thereby have given a comparative study of males and females which indeed prove that gender based approach towards handling of issues is also very important. Some of the diseases burden that is found to be higher in case of women is dementia, breast cancer as well as asthma which were not that high in men (Coleman. 2014). This chapter also discusses many facts that the research team have found out like about 60% of the Australians have less than adequate knowledge about health knowledge. Only 6 % of the people have been found o have adequate knowledge required for a healthy living. People belonging to linguistic and culturally diverse background are one of the contributing factors for it.

Source: National Women Health Policy, 2010)

This chapter has also been seen to develop a detailed idea about why female health is to be concerned in this policy. It has been stated by the researchers on the issue that the next few decades will mainly see the fundamental changes that can be observed in the historic patterns of the fertility, migration and also changes in life expectancy. Modern day medications and improvements and discoveries in the medical fields have helped to increase the life expectancy of the people. The median age of the women was found to be much higher than the men as they are found to be 37.4 years and 35.9 years respectively. Not only the median age, it was also found that the women tend to live for more years than the males that is about 4.8 years more than males. It states that females will make up to an increasing proportion of the old and very old cohorts of the population over time. This increasing population of the female based aging population will have a significant impact on Australian health system. All these data help in deriving the entire scenario of the present day Australia and how it would be shaped so that it can meet the demands of the aging population.

Body

This chapter has then clearly discussed the four important issues stated like the occurrence of the chronic diseases. Cardiovascular diseases are said to be the most common among the aging individuals. Women are found to have really less knowledge about the cardiovascular disease. Women are also reported to be increasingly affected by cancer and respiratory diseases in different research article as well. Which is really a serious concern for the government (Yu et al.,2014). Mental health disorders like the anxiety disorders, the following affective disorder and depression have been found to be very high in the cohort study of 16 to 54 years. It is found to decrease with age. Sexual and reproductive health is been found to affect a larger portion of Australian women where Chlamydia is most prevalent. It resulted in pelvic pain, infertility and ectopic pregnancy. They are manly found in the age cohort of 15 to 19 and from 20 to 29 years.  Disability along with increasing age is been rising as the population of aged women are also increasing in the recent era of rising scientific inventions. Osteoarthritis and migraines are found to have been intricately associated with every aging individual. Dementia is also seen to be affecting most of the aged women above 75 years. Thereby from these areas of discussion one can easily notice that the policy makers have covered and discuss each and every issue in details so that there should be a solution to the problems that are faced by the women of the country. Another interesting factor is that each and every of the age cohorts of the women have been included in the study and each and every disorder of each of the cohort has been discussed in details which had not only helped the readers but also has helped the hospital and similar healthcare sectors to take interventions and planning to overcome them.

While evaluating the chapter three, it is seen that the issues noted in chapter two are mainly discussed here through a thorough research of evidence based study and also examination of different current evidences. Role of sex and gender, health impacts of lifespan are very well discussed in along with statistics for morbidity and mortality. Causes of different types of cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, cancer, diabetes, unhealthy eating and physical activities have been discussed in details along with the life style risk factors that remain associated with the diseases. Mental health and well-being is also talked about that gives us idea about how each patient need to be handled and how these issues can be avoided.. Specific interventions for marginalised women such as rural and remote women, aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women, refugee and migrant women, minority sexual orientation and others are also thoroughly discussed. Sexual and reproductive health and benefits of contraceptives and safe sex are discussed to show how effectively things can be handled. Not only interventions about expecting mothers and new mothers are given but also correct procedures of following preventive measure and also curative measure for disability during old age, arthritis, musco-skeletal conditions, and dementia have been clearly discussed showing best results.

Policy Analysis and Critical Discussion

Chapter four mainly discusses about the measures taken from the part of the government like that of the preventive action plan called the ‘Australia: The Healthiest Country by 2020’, prevention to diabetes, screening programs like Breast Screen Australia,Collaborative Cancer Research Scheme, National Breast Cancer Foundation/BreastScreen Australia Cohort study, Practice Incentives Program (PIP) Cervical Screening incentive, Asthma Management Program, National Partnership Agreement on Preventive Health (NPAPH) and many others are discussed in details  to help the ordinary citizens to know about the initiatives taken by the government. Enabling infrastructure was also clearly demonstrated. Thus, chapter is entirely based on the initiatives done by the government and shows extensively how the government has been trying its best to help women coming out of dangers (Clarke & Olesen, 2013).

Chapter 5 mainly is shedding light on the various social determinants that have been mainly responsible for the diseases and various mental, emotional and physical complicacies. Sex and gender, life stages along with the accessibility to specific resources including income, education, social connections, safety as well as security and diversity mainly act as the social determinants and various stories have been discussed in details. They have even handled the three categories of young, mid age and old women and considered each of them in details while considering their social barriers. The detailed analysis along with the representation with impressive statistical data shows that a huge research has been gone into the process to bring out such an elaborative outlook (Linquist et al., 2016).

Chapter 6 have entirely described the goals that are set by the policy makers and how such goals have been helping more and more women to be aware of the states that they can take to make their problems known to the concerned stakeholders. This is not only helping women from realising their main issues but also ismaking the nation where women not only live happily but also enjoy the best emotional and physical health (Schmied et al., 2013). These chapters are described in such details that finding loopholes in such broad studies and initiate are indeed very difficult and the government should be appreciated for their huge support.

Conclusion:

From closely analysing each and every chapter one can thereby notice that the policy was the result of an elaborate research and survey (Kitson et al., 2013). This has in turn helped the policy to be enriched with crucial important points that require to be addressed to make the modern women free from the clutches of the burden of diseases (Reily et al., 2013). Another important point that is well accepted is that they have successfully established the fact that women face many diseases and challenges that need to be attended with a gender specific initiative (de Leeuw, Calvier & Breton, 2014). Sexual disorders, delivery related difficulties and many other always needed to be successfully handed and policy makers have been successful in doing so. It has also successfully positioned the present condition of the women in old age with statistics that show women tend to live longer than men and therefore medical preparations have to be made that way (Blank & Burau, 2013). This policy also establishes different diseases that have harmed the old women for ages and how they can develop their quality life. The policy approaches in a systematic way through chapters at first discussing the background, then the issues faced by women, then how to handle such challenges, then social determinants and following factors. Hence it is a very good policy helping readers to go in a systematic way (Haynes et al., 2015). The only negative aspect found here is the timeframe. Though they have mentioned it to be 20 years but they have not kept a strict timeframe for each of the intervention which might have helped women (Fisher et al., 2016). Moreover, no discussion about monitoring bodies is made creating concern about how well the policy with such good intentions would be executed.

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