An Essay on Health Influencing Factors in the Community
Nowadays, many communities not only in the United States but all over the world are facing the challenges of health issues particularly in a community setting. There are a lot of factors that contributes to that problem and some of which are not directly if not fully addressed. The local community leaders must be aware of the health threats and must be resolved in the community level to avoid the problems from evolving into a national concern. There is so much about health that people are not ware of, at some point residents of the community are not aware that they are already at the verge of major health problem. It is detrimental for every community to promote health on a new approach. In this essay we will discuss the importance of health awareness in community settings and analyze the contributing factor that leads to those problems. Solution is can only be achieved once the problem was fully deciphered. Programs promoting health awareness would help the bigger population, besides prevention being better than cure it is also important that we all know what causes those problems and know how to basically avoid them. There are so many debates on the standard approach, but then again identifying the influencing factors is the first step in the prevention process and this essay will discuss how it will be done and to what extent those factors may affect the community’s health condition in general.
Keywords: Health risks, Community Intervention, Prevention, health factors, health solutions
Community Health Threats
Large cities such as Houston Texas in the United States for example are working hard to keep their citizen’s health at the top-most condition. The futures of the nation as a whole is determined by how the communities work together in order to actively reduce if not to totally eliminate the threats to health. There are several factors that contribute to those threats and one of them is constant migration of different individuals coming in to the city for large number of different purposes. There is what we call as health disparities; it is defined as the difference in existence of health condition known to different population groups that some has a burden of disproportionate disease. They can be defined by population groups such as demographics, socio-economic status, race, gender, ethnicity, age and sexual orientation (Houstontx.gov. March 2008).
In a large city such as Houston, the coming in and out of different people fro all walks of social groups may leave traces of heath risks to the native population. Like for example, a person from a neighboring city that has a history of contagious health condition may find himself already cured, but little did he know that his body was just able to adapt to the illness making him a carrier of disease. When that person entered Houston, he may have interacted with the local residents and that involves a lot of direct and non-direct physical contact that will allow an easy transmission of the disease. As soon as he leaves Houston, the disease will be left behind to anyone and the spread of viral outbreak will soon follow. This is when health disparities comes in the picture, since the carrier might have a different set of genes designed to withstand strong infections, the nature of the people living in the city of Houston may not have the same set of genes that has same capability to control disease. Therefore anyone entering the city from another place is potentially a carrier of disease thus, poses as influential health threat.
The second factor is Economic progress in the community why? Houston as our example in this discussion is one of the biggest and most progressive states in the U.S. Having a total population of over two million residents, average of more than $45,000 thousand household income and less than five percent are unemployed, Houston is an economically stable state (Houstontx.gov. N.D.). Also 23 out of 500 Fortune companies are stationed in Houston leading the city for its economic drivers such as technology, aeronautics and energy. Being mentioned about economic growth, as we all know economic stability has its price and one of which are health risks derived from economic progress.
The more the community is engaged in large portfolio of industries it is likely to attract more people in the community and more people means more cars more trash and more cars more means more polluted environment. Air pollution coming from industries and huge number of vehicles in the city influences health on a grand scale because of many the different ways that pollution may result to many different illnesses. Being a neighbor to a petrochemical facility for instance will cause frequent exposure to Benzene which in return causes carcinogens which is a cancer derivative. Other than that are cardiovascular and respiratory related illnesses caused by polluted air (Sexton, Linder, Marko et al. July 5, 2007).
The third influential health factor is culture, why culture? In many ways popular culture have brought a lot of innovations and influenced lifestyle change. One of which is the wide dependency of many children in the city on the culture that dictates the standards of how healthy a child should be. In Houston the fattest in the population are children. Here parents don’t realize that their kid are already overweight and only sees them as plump. The University of Texas on Public Health and Texas department of health concluded that one third out of 60,000 children from 30 school districts measured are found to be overweight and this number is growing every year (Myoverweightchild.com N.D.). Popular culture also introduces so many interesting products attracting children and the parent’s culture of giving out the best for their kids without checking the back labels for nutritional information is only making it worst. Plus, children not engaged in physical activities and spends more time indoors watching TV or playing video games adds up to the problem. Obesity early in childhood poses risks for diabetes and cardiovascular diseases and the future of the children in Houston having that problem is not likely to change anytime.
Conclusion
What and how should the community react to the situation? First of all since the three major component of community health influences are identified, the next step to plan for action. Community leaders, health organizations and the citizens themselves must work out a program that will target the three influences. On the problem with social diversity, it would not hurt if the city government impose ordinance to further check the people coming in to the city of any potential health risk. Airports have to be thorough in checking the obvious health conditions of the people coming in and out. The citizens on the other hand have to be more vigilant when it comes to interacting with non local individuals. Sanitation is a must; it won’t hurt to always bring sanitizing lotion to keep off bacteria and viruses from spreading. Public awareness programs have to be intensified to keep the people informed of the basic health practices. Moreover, environmental actions against, pollution factories should be implemented and support it with a city ordinance that will back up the current policies stipulated in the national law on Clean Air Act. And lastly, health benefits on this region has to be in line with the prevailing health hazards and cover the main health conditions derived from the aforementioned influences, in this way the people are not only aware also well protected.
References
Houstontx.gov. (March 2008) The City of Houston Health Disparities Data Report Web Retrieved March 27, 2012 from http://www.houstontx.gov/health/disparity.pdf
Sexton, Ken. Linder, Marko, Stephen H., Dritana, Bethel, Heidi, and Lupo, Philip J. (July 5, 2007) Comparative Assessment of Air Pollution–Related Health Risks in Houston Web Retrieved March 27, 2012 from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2022677/
Houstontx.gov. (N.D.) Houston Facts and Figures Web Retrieved March 27, 2012 from http://www.houstontx.gov/abouthouston/houstonfacts.html
Myoverweightchild.com. (N.D.) Childhood Obesity in Houston Texas - Efforts of Houston Teacher Point out That Houston Kids Need Help Losing Weight Web Retrieved March 27, 2012 from http://www.houstontx.gov/abouthouston/houstonfacts.html
