The environmental health issue is one of the vital components of the public health system. Environmental Health focuses on the interactions between the people and the surrounding environment. It does the assessment and also controls factors that show the potential of affecting the health of human beings. Environmental health looks at the effects of environmental issues on the health of humans. It discusses how the natural environment interacts with human beings and how it affects a population. This is an issue that affects the whole population, and so there is a need for creation of a health-friendly environment, by the implementation of health policies. It seems the government has become somehow reluctant to put into place enough measures to ensure to keep our environment safe for co-existence. Continued exploitation of natural resources in the name of industrialization is one of the critical indicators of it. The changing environment causes a lot of effects on the human population. It is the role of the government to ensure that policies put into place are not only for this generation but also to safeguard the future. Environmental health is yet to come to terms with the effects of the environment and protecting humans from these effects. Vulnerable groups here include; women, children and the elderly. In this paper, we are going to look at the environmental health issue as a public health issue that affects the population.
Statement of the Problem
As much as human beings can affect the environment surrounding them, the environment also affects human health through human-related activities. The environment impacts human health in many ways that include Global warming, ultra-violet radiations, and contaminated air. These environmental issues have proven to affect the human population, .for example; there was a Zika virus outbreak that affected vulnerable women in the year 2013. There's much pollution that is causing diseases like asthma and also contaminating the water sources resulting in water-borne diseases. Globally, these environmental issues are contributing to more than 20% deaths and the number keeps rising gradually ( Eckelman & Sherman, 2016) . Climatic changes are causing wildfires and also prolonged periods of drought. This affects and at the same time endangers the living species. Poor disposal of waste products also has a dangerous effect on the environmental health issue ( Werner et al. 2015). The government is finding it difficult to run its health care delivery with such environment issues pulling behind its efforts.
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Suggestion for Addressing the Health Issue
The following are some of the measures that the government is supposed to put in place for it to successfully run the health delivery care system. The government should put more initiative on ensuring an eco-friendly environment. The government should now consider ranking pollution a natural disaster (Bayer & Galea, 2015). The government should also create awareness and also ensure all bodies are compliant to health-related policies. Identifying the source of most of these health issues will provide a better chance of preventing the same. World organizations, such as WHO should be given more funding from the government in the bid to fight for a better environment.
Toxicological processes should be monitored and regulated. If possible, the government should only allow pollutant free processes (Wang &Horton, 2015). There should be Environmental engineering and risk policies that will protect the environment and in the procedure protect the health of the people ( Eckelman & Sherman, 2016). Non-governmental organizations that champion for better health are supposed to be supported, to ensure that they continue defending for a better environment. Infrastructural and surveillance systems should be put in place to monitor the environment, and they will help in keeping check the environment and also watch hazardous triggers and hence prevent them before they happen. The government should even forego fossil fuels because these are the ones that emit gases into the air and instead embrace those energies that do not produce radioactive gases. There should also be Environmental education, and schools should incorporate this into the curriculum and also involve remote communities in these education programs ( Brownson et al. 2017). Tackling of Global warming and climatic changes will require more procedural legislative frameworks. Creating environmental health legislation will cover a broader scope of environmental health issues
Impact on the Health Care Delivery System
From the above suggestions, the health care delivery system will benefit in the following ways; it will ensure that a large population is safe from environmental hazards and this will have helped them achieve one of their main objectives, which is to provide better health care for the citizens. The health delivery care system will also be relieved some of their roles, and this will enable them to focus on other health matters that are not environmental. Increased government funding, will ensure that the health care delivery system smoothly runs its operations. Finally, the implementation of the above suggestions will lessen the burden that already the system bears and enable it to pool resources for other projects.
In conclusion, the environmental health issue is one of the public health issues that affect the US population directly and puts the health of the citizens at risk. It’s the role of the government to look for ways of reducing these effects which are mostly resulting from Climate Change. As a result, the health delivery care system will have achieved its objective of improving the health of US citizens.
References
Bayer, R, Galea, S (2015) Public health in the precision-medicine era- New England Journal of Medicine, - Mass Medical Soc
Brownson, R. C., Baker, E. A., Deshpande, A. D., & Gillespie, K. N. (2017). Evidence-based public health . Oxford University Press.
Eckelman, M. J., & Sherman, J. (2016). Environmental impacts of the US health care system and effects on public health. PloS one , 11 (6), e0157014.
Wang, H, Horton, R (2015) -Tackling climate changes : the greatest opportunity
Werner, A. K., Vink, S., Watt, K., & Jagals, P. (2015). Environmental health impacts of unconventional natural gas development: a review of the current strength of evidence. Science of the Total Environment , 505 , 1127-1141.
