Answer 1
Chronic illness refers to that illness that lasts for a very long time and usually cannot be cured completely though some of them can be controlled or managed through proper diet, exercise and certain medication. Although these diseases cannot be cured, the context to which an individual life is of a great importance and thus the health policy needs to play an important role in ensuring that they promote the life health of people ailing from these diseases. The maintenance and health promotion related to this illnesses can be achieved through the combination of physical, mental and social well-being of this patients and thus health policy can emphasize and educate patients ailing to focus more on lifestyle such as exercise, enough sleep, proper diet and maintaining healthy body weight, limiting alcohol use and avoiding smoking (Palfrey, 2000). The environment also can be viewed as an important factor influencing the health status of individuals and thus the health policy can help improve the characteristic of the natural environment, the built environment, and the social environment. This can be achieved by factors such as clean water and air, adequate housing and also safe communities and roads and thus, the health policy should take this into account to promote the health of people with chronic illnesses. Another way through which the health policy can help improve their health is by the provision of proper medicines at an affordable price offering special treatment towards them. This can help to improve this patient’s health and also prolong their lives.
Answer 2
When compared, health care access in our country is easily offered to the young adults than older adults. Older adults experience the effects of health care disparities since they are more likely to have chronic illnesses compared to young adults, and thus, they are at much risk because they make frequent visits to medical facilities and live in poverty. Comparing men and women, women tend to have poor access to health care. This is due to the fact that women lack empowerment and face some forms of gender inequality which may include the restriction on one’s mobility and behavior and also have unequal control over financial resources. Their access can also be led by the social, economic status where women’s health is critically affected. Poverty is another factor that facilitates the existence of gender disparities in health thus act as a form of the barrier into women access to better health care. Violence and abuse against women also play a greater role preventing a woman access a high-quality health care service. Comparing health care access between members of various cultural groups in our country, it is clear that some of the cultural groups tend to have better access to better health care (Walshe & Smith, 2011). This may be due to the geographical occupation across the country where other places have better and improved medical facilities than others. It can also arise due to poverty where some other cultural groups are wealthier giving them better access to health care and other live in poverty making them unable to cater for high-quality health services.
In order to help some groups to culturally get access to resonant services, the health policy needs to ensure that they bring and provide better quality medical facilities to those areas having poor medical facilities, they can also ensure they provide a improved infrastructure to areas without to ensure everybody have access to better health services. They should also ensure they provide some other free medical services to the poor.
Answer 3
There are some policies that seem to fall short on certain groups. An example is a right to health whereby some cultural groups don’t put into practice depending on their faith. This relies on their religious beliefs for not caring for those in less favorable circumstances including the sick. Cultural practice may also cause shortfall on the policy of right to health where some tend to seek medical treatment related to their culture. Another policy is the policy of life cover insurance where some groups of people don’t take especially young people who do not have an insurance cover. It’s true that some groups within a society will not have their needs met through health policy. An example is healthcare financing such as public funded health care, mandatory or private health insurance, and complete capitalization of personal health care services through private companies. This can at times fail to meet the needs of the poor who might be unable to pay for the prepayments for those medical insurance covers. People of low risks may also not benefit from this policy since they might not be allowed to take insurance coverage. In order to make health policy as an intervention to reach many people as possible, the government needs to ensure there is reduced prepayments related life cover insurance. Also, they can help to ensure that the right to health policy is attained through provision of improved and better health facilities in all regions around the country.
References
Palfrey, C. (2000). Key concepts in healthcare policy and planning. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan Press.
Walshe, K., & Smith, J. (2011). Healthcare management. Maidenhead, Berkshire, England: McGraw Hill/Open University Press.
