Socioeconomic Impact on Health Case Study

Health promotion can be considered as the process for improving health or providing greater control over the health for people. The main aim for the health promotion would be to allow individual and group of people to attain the state for social, mental and physical well being. Health promotion process would identify & realize the needs, satisfy human needs and change with the dynamic environment around us. Health promotion process would consist of several aspects such as preventative health, organizational development, public policies, community based work, environmental health, health education and economic regulatory etc.

The focus of current paper would be towards health promotion with particular focus on the case study of Christina and Paul who are smoker and drinker. Further present paper would talk about the issue of smoking during pregnancy in terms of its epidemiology. Models and approaches would be suggested through the present paper in order to allow improvement in the lifestyle of Christina and Paul.

The socioeconomic impact on health

Impact of socio-economic influences on Christina and Paul’s health and their unborn child

Health promotion can be considered as the process so that people can be enabled so as to improve their health status and conditions. Public health in this context can be understood as the process of prolonging life with the help of coordinated efforts from the society and promoting the health and well being for the public. Social determinants of health can be considered as the social, economic and political factors which can create barriers for promoting health for the individuals, population and communities etc.

Make sure your essay is 100% unique

Our experts will write for you an essay on any topic, with any deadline and requirements from scratch

127 our experts are available
right now

Get custom essay

The impact of the socioeconomic factors on Christina’s health can be considered as the combination of various aspects which may include the citizenship status, occupation, discrimination and environment etc. This provides the way in which Christina fits into the society by making use of the social and economic factors which are having immense impact on her life. Health and socioeconomic status of a person are closely related and in case of Christina these would impact the way in which healthcare facilities are being accessed by her due to limited education and financial resources (Davies and Macdowall, 2006).

Smoking habit of Christina can be categorized under the health and lifestyle issue in the present context. Smoking habit in Christina can have negative impact over her health by causing cancer of heart diseases along with the adverse health impact on the unborn child of Christina. Another impact of smoking habits for Christina would be in terms of the economic values as she is working for 16 hours in a supermarket and this would not enough for the bright future of Christina and her child as Cigarette would be a major expense for her. Hence a major part of her income would go towards paying for cigarette due to which further health related impacts would arise for Christina (Watson and Platt, 2000).

Significance of government sources such as reports/research on equalities in health in relation to the case scenario

Government resources can be understood as the resources deployed by public in order to categorize between right or wrong. The importance of government resources such as report or research can be given by the below sources:

Black report DHHS 1980: The main purpose of the Black report is to identify the health inequalities issues faced. Such reports would be helpful in order to analyze the lifestyle and health records for the people who are facing health inequality issues. This report has revealed that the problem of inequality was linked with the factors such as poor income, lack of education and unsupportive environment and the issues faced were not related with the NHS(Bull and McFarlane, 2011).

The Acheson report 1998: This was one of the independent inquiries made in the field of health and social care for UK so as to reveal the status of health inequalities. This survey was done for the people at disadvantage and it was found out that the major cause of health inequality was poverty.

Health survey for England: These are the series of health related survey conducted from year 1991 and are being conducted in order to gain the information related with the health and health related behavior among the private household people living in UK.

Health and Lifestyle survey: This survey was conducted in year 1991 and 1992 so as to understand the concept of self reported health and belief about cause of health so that an accurate measurement can be done for the lifestyle of adults in different age brackets and circumstances across UK.

Reasons and any possible barriers to Christina and Paul accessing health care

Barriers can be considered as something which stops a person from getting something or somewhere. Healthcare can be considered as the highly organized provision for the community and individuals living in society. Christina left the education at the age of 15 years and started living in the council flat with her family members.

Since Christina left the school so early hence it was not possible for her to get a good job due to which she ended up getting into a part time job in a supermarket wherein she was working for 16 hours daily. Being a smoker she would have negative impact on her life as she would end up paying most of her income for buying the cigarettes (Stavans, 2010). Access to healthcare services would be quite limited for Christina since healthcare services are quite expensive at the time of pregnancy. One of the major reasons for Christina for not accessing the healthcare services was not that she is earning lesser income but she left the study and was not able to get a good job as she become pregnant at an early stage. Showing dependency on parents was not so simple hence she becomes the independent.

The approach for solving health inequalities for Christina would be individualistic approach. Individualistic approach is having a firm belief that inequalities in the life of Christina are due to the way she choose a particular style to live her life. People with lower socioeconomic background such as Christina would be smoking more and having lesser exercise. Unhealthy diets taken by such people would be other characteristics of such people. Health advertisement campaign run by the various healthcare stakeholders can educate Christina regarding the responsibility for own health and care of her unborn child(Haugen, 2008).

Models of health promotion

Links between government strategies and models in health promotion in relation to the case study. Her you must use Beattie model of health promotion to support your answer in relation to the Christina and Paul.

Looking into the case study of Christina and Paul it can be consider that several government strategies such as choosing health 2005, healthy lives healthy people 2010 and campaigns such as smoking health harm campaign and Change4life etc promote health status for the people living in UK. These government strategies are having linkage with the model for health promotion such as the Beattie model.

Beattie model for health promotion is considered as a complex health promotion model which assumes that the health promotion is having strong influence from the social and cultural practices. This model for health promotion does not only allow individuals to understand the past health promotion strategies and role of individuals in those strategies but also help in order to frame the future strategies so as to ensure the success in health promotion(Valente, 2002).

There are four quadrants in the Beattie model for the health promotion and these represents the health persuasion techniques, personal counseling, community development and legislation action etc. The two factors basis on which the four quadrants are formed would include mode of intervention (authoritative or negotiated) and focus of intervention (collective or individual).

This health model is linked to government strategy as government work in a top down approach through legislation action and health persuasion techniques. These approaches are highly useful for the individuals like Christina as various suggestions are laid out so as to help the individuals to promote their health through these legislations. But one of the key limitations for using these methods can be blaming approach wherein limited changes can be implemented.

For people like Christina personal counseling and community development approach would be of immense importance as these approach would empower the users and enhance their skill set regarding the ill effects which Christina would be having on her health and unborn child due to smoking habit(Gottwald and Goodman-Brown, 2012).

Role different professionals in health and social care have on meeting health promotion targets set by government

In order to help people like Cristina and Paul Government has set up healthcare promotions across the Country and has fixed targets for the professionals engaged in the health and social care to achieve them so as to fulfil the Government’s commitment to help its people. Healthcare professional pay a pivotal role in fulfilling the promotional targets set by the Government to help people like Cristina and Paul.

Healthcare professionals offer consultancy and assistance to retain and develop the mental and physical welfare of a person that’s transcends beyond usual indications and apprehensions. Healthcare professionals utilizes each contact with the person to retain and develop the physical and mental welfare by specifically focusing on the lifestyle threats such as alcohol, tobacco, physical activity and diet in accordance with the specialization of the Healthcare professional(Stretch, 2007).

The Government has engaged various models for putting in place the promotion targets so as to help the people like Cristina and Paul and each of the models has its own approach to counter the health issues faced by people like Cristina and Paul.

Health and social care professionals has to undertake stringent challenges to fulfil the commitment of the Government. Health and Social care professional need to make the contact effective so as to develop the welfare of the people. In order to fulfill the promotional targets fixed by the Government, the health and social care professionals engage themselves into suitable training and education so as to comprehend the wider spectrum of functions they need to undertake for making each contact effective and also they are prepared with the ability and comprehension required to fulfil the targets.

Health and Social care professionals improved their communication abilities so that they can provide advisory to the individuals and society in order to comprehend the approach and behaviours underlying their health and the parameters like family and culture which affect the health. Health and Social care professionals also comprehend the various approaches the models of healthcare programs devised by the Government and the respective targets set for each of them. In the present scenario, people like Cristina who would require counselling and community development to effectively cure her, health and social care professionals are equipped with proper expertise to engage people like Cristina and provide suitable counselling and develop welfare among these people. Therefore, the roles played by the health and social care professionals in achieving the promotional targets fixed by the Government are immensely important (Burgess, Shaw and Kellas, 2011).

Role of routines in promoting healthy living

Promoting healthy living is regarding being healthy, living a healthy way of life, preventing diseases and lastly avert any current disease from becoming worse. The routines in promoting healthy living are immunization, distributing brochure on diet, smoking, obesity, alcohol, averting heart illness, cervical screening, etc. The routines of promoting health living help provide information regarding general health promotion, improved way of living, averting critical illness, avoid unhealthy practices like smoking, consumption of alcohol, and undertake healthy lifestyles like exercises etc.

The role of routines in promoting healthy living is to encourage people to adopt a better way of living so as to live a life free from illness, unhealthy practices and improve welfare of the person as well as the society. The routines in promoting healthy living also encourage immunization and vaccination programs which are aimed to prevent the illness from start. The routines also help in preventing deadly diseases like heart diseases and cancer by providing proper information and facilitating access to suitable healthcare professional so that even minor issues can be addressed and cured at its inception.

 Another important role of these routines is to arrest illness and prevent it from growing or becoming worse, through implementation of suitable lifestyle, diet and other necessary activities. In the context of society, the routines in promoting healthy living assist in prevention of alcohol, drugs and substance abuse by providing information regarding the ill effects of alcohol and drugs and showing innovative ways to counter the challenges faced by all section of people in the society due to alcohol and substance abuse.

The routines also guide people to avert accidents and injuries by propaganda of information regarding various accidents and injuries and ways to recover from them. The routines in promoting healthy living also address issues concerning men’s and women’s personal health and providing information and access to counselling and advisories to recover from them (Wills, 2007).

Therefore, routines in promoting healthy living not only encourage individuals to adopt a better way of life and improve their standards of living by implementing healthier ways but also inform the society about the benefits of living health and abstain from substances like alcohol, drugs and other substances. By informing people, these routines act as a major turnaround for people to act against illness and resist a disease from growing (Wills, 2007).

Factors which influences health promotion

Health beliefs relate to the theories of health behaviour

There is a clear linkage between the health belief model and theories of health behaviour. The model is seen as a basis of getting an idea relating to health behaviour. The evolution of the model occurred back in the earlier part of 1950s. Since then, the model has proved to be of greater use and it has also been successful in promoting different health behaviours such as use of condoms, use of seat belts, use of health screening and health compliance. The health belief model is based on a single belief a person will take proper actions for his/her health if the following things occur:

• He is of the feeling that an adverse health condition may occur.
• He/she has an expectation that availing a recommended action will help him/her in preventing the occurrence of such adverse health condition, such as; the usage of seatbelts may prevent the occurrences of accidents (Kelleher and Hillier, 2002).
• He/she believes that a recommended health action can be availed by him/her successfully.

The Health Belief model is regarded as the structure that can be utilized in motivating people to avail positive health action being the prevention of negative consequences the main factor of motivation behind this. For instance the chances of heart attacks are higher for people with high blood pressure and this motivates them to exercise on a regular basis.

A health behaviour is set by the health belief model one of the main components of this model is to motivate a person to prevent adverse health consequences. The example given above can be taken as a perfect instance of the model however if a person works out for a good look or a better feeling the same cannot be regarded as an example of the model as the person has not enhanced the level of his exercise out of the motivation to prevent and adverse health results(Kelleher and Hillier, 2002).