Chapter 15: Environmental Concerns: Waste & Pollution

Environmental Concerns: Wastes and Pollution

Natural hazards in the environment can damage or even destroy wildlife habitats, kill or farm humans, and damage property. Some natural include: earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, avalanches, winds, dust storms, floods, wildfires, droughts, hurricanes, and tornadoes. As people go about their daily activities they produce residues and waste. These residues and waste include, urine and feces, trash and garbage, clippings and tree branches, scrap wood and metal, contaminated water solvents, excess heat, animal dung, runoff from feedlot operations, crop residues, animal carcasses, carbon monoxide, gaseous pollutants, used motor oil, mining waste, electrical power waste, nuclear power wastes, and weapons production waste. As you can see the list is very large, meaning there is a lot of waste and pollution!

There are several different types of waste, solid wastes, hazardous wastes, air pollution, water pollution, radiation, and noise pollution. Each of these groups have a source, a way to manage the waste, collect the waste, recycle the waste and dispose it.

Solid waste can be traced to four sources, mining and gas and oil production; agriculture; industry and municipalities. Mining generates about 38% of solid waste production. Agriculture makes up 51% and industrial makes up about 8%. Solid waste management involves the collection, transportation, and storage and disposal of waste by incineration or in a landfill. However now it includes source reduction, reuse of products, recycling and composting. About 80% of the money spent on waste management is spent on the collection process. The main approach is to limit its creation in the first place. Avoiding nonreusable products is key in this step.

America produces a lot of waste and we have to deal with the waste we produce, which hasn’t always been done efficiently. There are many steps to take to make sure waste and pollutants are taken care of properly. The cost is also of great concern, but waste pollution effects our health so we need to make sure we are taken care of it so it doesn’t affect our healthy negatively.

Chapter 14: Health Care System: Function

Health Care System: Function

Health care provided in the United States is arguably the best in the world, however the services offered in the United States aren’t available to everyone, because of the cost. An alarming concern is minorities in the United States often receive a “lower quality of care than do their white counterparts.” There are several ways to gain access to the health care system, even with all the different ways to gain access to the health care system, 46.6 million Americans were uninsured in 2005. The chance of being uninsured goes up for younger people, people with less education, people with lower incomes.

Payments for the U.S. health care bill comes from four sources, the consumers themselves, private insurance companies, public or government insurance programs, and a small portion are paid by private funds. There are two ways of payment, fee-for-service and prepaid health care. Fee-for-service the more traditional of the two is an arrangement based on the “assumption that services are provided in a set of identifiable and individually distinct units such as doctors office visit or a specific medical procedure.” In this process the consumer selects a provider, receive care from the provider, incur a expense for the care, the provider is reimbursed for the covered services, and the consumer is responsible for the remaining.

The language of a health insurance policy can be very confusing, and there are several terms everyone should be familiar with. Deductible is the amount of expenses the consumer must pay out of pocket before the insurance company will pay for covered services. Fixed indemnity is the maximum amount an insurer will pay for a certain service. Exclusion is written into a policy, and it means that a specified health condition is not included in the coverage.

Health care is a very controversial topic, and the debate about it can get very heated. Should everyone be giving insurance even if they can’t afford it, how good should their coverage be? How much should people who can afford coverage have to pay? When lives are at risk as seen in the movies Johnny Q we watched in class, insurance policy can change without notice and the consumer can be left in the dark.

Chapter 12: Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drugs

Alcohol, tobacco and other drug use is the biggest community health issue in the US. People that choose to use drugs pose a significant threat to society in the form of economic liability, loss of productivity, unnecessary drain on the healthcare system and mental health services. Drug use and potential for addiction is determined by environmental factors as well as possible inheritance. Genetics, home and family life, school and peer groups, and the sociocultural environment are the factors that effect drug and alcohol use.

Drug use is a non-evaluative term  referring to drug taking behavior in general. Drug misuse refers to inappropriate use of legally purchased prescription or nonprescription drugs. Drug abuse can mean taking a prescription or nonprescription drug for something other than what it was intended for, taking a legal drug after being aware that it's detrimental to your health, and use of any illicit drug.

Drug abuse is prevented by first off teaching kids and adults about the dangers about using drugs as well as taking any measures that deter people from buying the product such as raising prices/taxes on products, arresting/ stopping drug dealers, and destroying crops before that ever end up on the market.
Secondary prevention programs are usually implemented in high school when users are not chronic users yet.
Tertiary prevention is designed to provide drug abuse treatment and aftercare.
More of the prevention strategies that we're implementing in this country need to be toward primary prevention considering that everything rolls down hill. If there were more programs that stopped kids from starting use, then we would have more money saved from unnecessary healthcare expenditure.

Chapter 11: Community Mental Health

Mental illness is the leading cause of disability in the US, Canada and western Europe. Some of the issues that college students and other youth deal with includes: anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, sexual assault, and personality disorders. Origins to these mental health issues are usually attributed to heredity or environmental factors. Adults in good mental health are able to function under adversity, change or adapt to change, maintain control over tension or anxiety, find more satisfaction in giving than receiving, show consideration, curb hate and guilt, and love others.

Prior to the 1950's and 60's, labotomy and shock therapy were the norms for dealing with mental health patients. After this, came about antipsychotic drugs. The deinstitutionalism of mental health facilities started after this point and thousands of patients were removed from state-owned mental hospitals to more community based settings. There was a push to reduce spending for mental hospitals, and an economic pull towards profits from providing outpatient and inpatient services.

Today there is a steady increase of people with mental health problems that get stuck in jail because there's no where else to house them, and there's a limitation of services that are open. They have problems getting their medication,and when they do get it, they have no support system, and often stop taking the meds. This coincidentally lands them back in jail. The community needs to recognize that a lot of the people with mental illness also suffer from not having certain resources like housing, transportation, food, medical care and adequate income.

Chapter 10 Community Health and Minorities

     First and foremost, it's interesting to know that America is the world's first truly multiracial democracy. The majority of the U.S. are white, non-latino Americans (67%), and the remaining 33% are racial and ethnic minorities. It seems there have been a lot of push toward equality in healthcare for racial and ethnic minorities. There was a National effort formed by Clinton to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities. It's purpose was to enhance efforts in (1) preventing disease, (2) promoting health, and (3) delivering care to racial and ethnic minority communities.
     There were also brief rules made in the 1980s for race and ethnic standards for Federal Statistics and Administrative Reporting. This was a way to better operationalize race and ethnicity, though it was important to note that categories of race are more of a social category than biological, self-reported data regarding race and ethnicity may be unreliable because of the varied cultures and heritages and multiples races, and also many nonfederal health data systems do not collect self-reported race or ethnicity data.
     There was a lot of data in chapter ten on each individual race and ethnic group of individuals. One fact that seemed to stick out was the fact that the poverty rate of American Indians and Alaska Natives is 25.3%, which is the highest among all racial and ethnic groups.
     Refugees, being the new population in the country, put a lot of strain on public and private health services. Some problems including lack of jobs, new competition, strain on budgets for school and health, further burden on the human, health, and mental health services, and cultural barriers. Furthermore, the diseases are more prevalent because they can be seen across the racial and ethnic groups. These can be noted as infant mortality, cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and HIV/AIDS.
     In conclusion, culture is a vital factor in both how community health professionals deliver services and how community members respond to community health programs. The communities in the U.S. need empowerment and equality for it's members and the minorities as well. Hopefully in the future, by 2050, when minorities are nearly half of the population, we will find a better balance.
    

Chapter 8: Adolescents, Young Adults, and Adults

It is during this period in life, that certain lifestyle decisions are made that will have long term influences on health in later years of life.

Much of the physical threat to adolescents and young adults stems from their behavior rather than disease. Seventy five percent of all mortality can be attributed to accidental injury, suicide and homicide. Many adolescents and young adults are exposed to considerable risk from STD's and pregnancy by participating in unprotected sex.

The younger population are susceptible to deleterious behaviors such as: substance abuse, fighting and weapon carrying. The health status of these ages as a whole group could be improved by reducing these high risk behaviors. Many people agree that many health problems could be improved from regular screenings and preventative healthcare, but that's not always an option, as the chapter shows. Many adults don't enjoy the benefits of insurance from it simply being too costly or not working at all.

Many health problems originate from social and cultural environments in which people have been raised and live, and the cultural and social norms. Unfortunately, many children are born a raised into families that don't always practice the best healthy choices. Many adolescents start smoking and drinking at an early age because it's provided for them at home and there's no structure around restricting it's use.

Chapter 7

This chapter discusses maternal, infant, and child health. The United States has made a dramatic improvement in decreasing the infant mortality rate; however, we are still one of the countries with the highest rate. Half of the pregnancies are unintended in the United States. This affects the children because some women may not realize they are pregnant so they are not receiving the prenatal health care necessary. This may lead to fetal alcohol syndrome for a lot of children. I found the fact that our country is 28th in infant mortality is outrageous because our medical system is one of the most advanced in the world. We are receiving funding from title nine and the establishment of family planning clinics has started to improve the maternal and child health of our nation.

Chapter 6

The School Health Program: A Component of Community Health

A coordinated school health program (CSHP) is defined as “an organized set of policies, procedures, and activities designed to protect, promote, and improve the health and well being of students and staff, thus improving the student’s ability to learn.” A CSHP takes a lot of time and effort from many different people, the people who work together to plan and put in place a school health program are referred to as the school health council. For a council to be successful it is important to have a wide variety of members, administrators, food service workers, counseling personnel, maintenance workers, medical personnel, social workers, parents, students, and teachers.

Even though school’s main concern is to educate students, it is hard to educate an unhealthy student. “Health of children and their learning are reciprocally related.” School health policies are written statements that provide a framework to guide all those who work within the program. There are many steps to developing this policy and these steps include, indentifying the policy development team, assessing the districts needs, prioritizing needs and developing an action plan, drafting a policy, building awareness and support, adopting and implementing the policy, maintaining, measuring, and evaluating.

School health education is defined as “planned sequential, K-12 curriculum that addresses the physical, mental, emotional, and social dimensions of health. School health education could play a large role in reducing serious health problems in the United States. The program should focus on the following issues, alcohol and drug free lifestyle, healthy eating, mental and emotional health, personal health and wellness, physical activity, safety/unintentional injury prevention, sexual health, tobacco free lifestyle, and violence prevention.

As stated in the reading school health education could play a big part in reducing some of the serious health problems we have in the United States. However it is alarming how much time or lack of time is spent on health education. It was pretty in our class discussions to only have a semester or two of gym, and a semester of health but we have to spend four years in english classes, three years in math classes, two years in science and social studies classes. What make health less important than the classes we have to spend more time in? In fact it could be argued that health educational classes are more important because it will affect every single one of us for the rest of our lives.

Chapter 4 Summary: Epidemiology

     There are many different ways to categorize or classify different diseases and health problems. Diseases classified by organs or organ systems would be diseases such as kidney or heart disease. You could also classify disease by their causative agents, which may be biological, being viral or from bacteria; chemical agents, such as drugs, food additives, or air pollutants; or physical agents, being heat or light, for example.
     There are two categories of disease; communicable and noncommunicable. Communicable diseases are highly contagious and are easily transmitted from one person to another. Examples of a communicable disease would be the common cold, pneumonia, or the syphilis. A noncommunicable disease cannot be transmitted from one person to another. An example or two of a noncommunicable disease would be diabetes or heart disease.
     Another aspect of disease is whether it is acute or chronic. An acute disease that is also communicable would be the common cold because that is considered to last shorter than three months and can be easily transmitted from one person to another. An acute, noncommunicable disease example would be appendicitis because it may be short-lived but cannot be transmitted from one person to another. Chronic diseases last three months or considerably longer. A chronic, communicable disease example is AIDS. A chronic, noncommunicable disease would be something like diabetes or coronary heart disease.
   There are three different levels to preventing such diseases. Primary prevention is the education given to people to avoid the disease or forestall it. Secondary prevention might be the health screenings you get in order to provide prompt treatment, and Tertiary prevention is the retraining, re-educating, and rehabilitation of the patient after the disease is already known.
     The diseases we are concerned about now are not necessarily communicable diseases but have turned to concern on noncommunicable diseases and how to prevent them by changing lifestyle choices. It was also interesting to see the different types of diseases and those that most often caused death.

Chapter 3: Epidemiology

Chapter 3 focused primarily on the overview of epidemiology which is the study of the distribution and determinants of disease and injuries in the community. They want to know the details surrounding the sicknesses. This profession has a lot of mathematical data which makes it interesting. We've never fully understood everything an epidemiologist does until we finished reading this chapter. Also, a lot of definitions were provided in these chapters which we never knew which helped us gain knowledge! Right now I am taking Principles of Epidemiology and I am finding this class to be very interesting.It definitely seems like a busy and interesting profession. Also, we learned a lot about all the different studies and surveys done to collect data. The purpose of the three different types of studies is to determine the cause of injury, disease, and death in the community and to provide information which will assist in controlling current outbreaks and preventing future ones. These studies are a source of primary prevention as a way of educating people to make the right decisions based on the data provided. It was interesting to see how the data charts are broken down and put into terms that are easy to understand.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Up until the past one hundred years health was dealt with on an emergency basis, however now health issues are being dealt with on a continuous basis. However some obstacles still stand in our way to deal with these health issues. In chapter two the book discusses many organizations that have been developed in order to help aid us in our well-being, these following organizations are a few the book dicussed.

World Health Organization (WHO), is the most profoundly known of these organizations, and their key purpose is the “attainment by all people of the highest possible level of health.” The WHO is guided by two documents, the 11^th General Programme of Work and the United Nations Millennium Declaration.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is responsible for defending the health of all Americans and providing human services for those in need. Programs carried out by HHS include but are not limited to: Administration on Aging (AoA), who tracks the characteristics, circumstances, and needs for older people; as well as develop policies, plans and programs to promote their welfare. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), they focus on developing and applying disease prevention and control, environmental health, and health promotion and educational activities designed to improve the health of people in America.

Quasi-governmental health organizations have some official health responsibilities but operate like voluntary health organizations. One of most well-known quasi-governmental health organization would be the American Red Cross. They serve to provide relief from natural disasters, serve the liaison between members of the active armed forces and their families during emergencies. In addition to those official duties, they also have blood drives, nursing and health services, youth services, and community volunteer services.

We particularly like the fact that there are many programs and agencies in place to help aid our efforts in development of our nation’s health. However we did come to the consensus that with all the organization that are provided it may be confusing about where to start or where to go if you need help. Also it was discussed when you calling one of these agencies it is a hassle to get a hold of the right person.

Chapter 1 Community Health: Yesterday,Today and Tomorrow

Chapter 1 introduced us to the definitions of community and of health and how they come together to form the basis of our class and our understanding of the field. Community being a group of people who have the same interests or common bonds and are working towards a goal. Health being a state of complete physical, mental and social well being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity. There are physical, social and cultural factors that all work in a balance to form a healthy community.

Public health really became prevalent with the Roman Empire.They were the first civilization to use public baths, aqueducts to supply the city with drinking and bathing water, and regulations about buildings that were in disrepair. The spiritual era was the rise of the Catholic church and the belief that disease was punishment for our sins. Not until the Renaissance did people accept the fact that the environment may have something to do with transmission of diseases. The Industrial Revolution brought on horrible living conditions in the home and the workplace as children were forced to work long hours. Since then, we've developed vaccines, health departments and ways to teach people about healthy lifestyles.

We've noticed how far we've come with our healthcare, and how our focus is not on how to overcome communicable diseases anymore (as these issues have been resolved with immunizations, better hygiene and sanitation), but how to make better lifestyle choices.

testing testing!!!

Just seeing if this works.