How do bio-psychosocial, political, economic, and environmental conditions impact public health? Provide two examples.
The interrelationship among bio—psychosocial, political, economic, and environmental factors determine population and personal health. Bio-psychosocial factors encompass social factors, biological and genetic factors, health services and individual behavior that influence population and individual health (Galea, 2016). For instance, social predictors of health reflect the social condition and physical environment where individuals are born, survive, educated, work, play, and age, which affect a variety of functioning, health and quality-of-life results. A typical example is social attitudes and norms like discrimination, social interaction and support, mass media and latest technology exposure, poverty, and public safety. Evidently, the diabetes epidemic in developed countries such as the United States largely affects socioeconomically disadvantaged minorities such as African Americans.
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Physical environment refers to the weather, built environment, climate change, physical barriers, housing, aesthetic elements and exposure to hazardous and toxic substance. A typical example is exposure of millions of Americans to unhealthy ozone levels, which explains pervasiveness of public health epidemics such as asthma in adult and children population in the United States urban compared to rural areas (Galea, 2016).
Individual behavior includes health-related lifestyles. A typical example is the link between unhealthy lifestyles such as smoking, alcoholism, sedentary lifestyle and unhealthy diets with lifestyle diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Similarly, some public health interventions targets change of individual behavior. A typical example is physiotherapy, dietary therapy, alcohol, cigarette and drug abuse cessation, and hand washing prescriptions to pathogenic diseases and cardiovascular, blood pressure and diabetes diseases.
Biological and genetic factors refer to the relationship between physiological and hereditary factors with some epidemiological diseases. A typical example is a generally more unhealthy elderly population than younger populations. Another example is the genetic basis of diseases such as sickle cell anemia, which is inherited from parents carrying sickle cell gene especially from Western African ancestors. Other examples include gene BRCA1 or BRCA2 carrying individuals’ susceptibility to ovarian and breast cancer.
Lastly, political factors relates to government healthcare policies at the state, local and federal level, and its impact on population health. A typical example is increasing on sin tax for tobacco and alcohol, which helps in improvement of public health by reducing alcohol and tobacco related health problems such as cirrhosis and diabetes. Another example is the enactment of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act and the Highway Safety Act of 1965, which helped in the reduction of deaths and injuries associated with automobile accidents (Galea, 2016).
How can nurses advocate in situations of healthcare disparities and promote health? Provide two examples.
Florence Nightingale, the mother of modern nursing is considered as the first patient advocacy nurse. Like in Nightingale’s care, advocacy in nursing rests on emphasis on justice as one of the fundamental needs of humans (Davoodvand, Abbaszadeh and Ahmadi, 2016) . More than any other healthcare expert, nurse are always and closely in contact with patients and their care issues, and therefore in a better position to pursue and deliver justice for patients than any other healthcare professional. Furthermore, nurses are the primary advocates for the needs of patients as the intermediary between the health care system and the patient.
Like in mainstream advocacy, nursing advocacy is concerned with fighting for the property and rights of other people. In particular nursing advocacy entails serving as representative for the patient, defending his/her universal and personal rights, safeguarding his/her interests, and serving as a mouthpiece for the disadvantaged and downtrodden.
Typical role of nurses’ advocacy role in addressing redistributive justice includes rural placement for nursing students to the heavier health care burden on rural health care staff due to higher bio-psychosocial and socioeconomic vulnerability of rural population to certain epidemiological diseases. A typical example is a partnership between the Wisconsin-based SSM Health and University and Monroe Clinic to donate the large number of doctorate of nursing practice (DNP) from the university to the Clinic during the student’s mandatory preceptorships or field placements, and positive placements (Tenenbaum, 2019) . Such move is helpful in addressing the health gap between the cities and rural areas by redistributing DNP from the labor oversupplied cities to the undersupplied rural areas.
References
Davoodvand, S., Abbaszadeh, A., & Ahmadi, F. (2016). Patient advocacy from the clinical nurses' viewpoint: A qualitative study. Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine, 9 (5).
Galea, S. (2016). Integrative Chapter: Macrosocial Determinants of Population Health. Macrosocial Determinants of Population Health, 295-297. doi:10.1007/978-0-387-70812-6_14
Tenenbaum, D. (2019, July 23). Rural placements for nursing students help address rural health-care shortage. Retrieved July 24, 2019, from https://news.wisc.edu/rural-placements-for-nursing-students-help-address-rural-health-care-shortage/
