Assignment: Background Of The Public Health Issue

Assignment: Background Of The Public Health Issue
Assignment: Background Of The Public Health Issue
Submit a research paper that focuses on a potential practicum project. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). The project should focus on the background of the public health issue, essential services of public health, purpose of addressing this issue, application of theory, and projected outcomes.
Write a 15–20-page, double-spaced paper in Word format. Apply APA standards to citation of sources.
Utilize at least 7–10 scholarly sources in your research and be sure to include a references page. Write in a clear, concise, and organized manner; demonstrate ethical scholarship in accurate representation and attribution of sources; and display accurate spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
Note: Information on the practicum process was provided to you in Week 1. (Practicum packet attached)
Submit your response as a Microsoft Word document
Assignment 2 Grading Criteria
Maximum Points
Provided a background of the public health issue and the purpose of addressing this issue.
75
Identified the essential services of public health relevant to the selected public health issue.
90
Applied appropriate theories to the public health issue.
90
Discussed the projected outcomes.
85
Presented a structured document free of spelling and grammatical errors.
20
Used at least 7-10 current references for support.
20
Properly cited sources using APA format.
20
Total:
400
The Issue of Sanitation
As the population of the world became more urbanized in the nineteenth century, unclean living conditions became more typical in working-class regions, and sickness became more widespread.
Smallpox, cholera, typhoid, and tuberculosis, for example, reached unparalleled levels in London.
Smallpox killed one out of every ten people, according to estimates.
More than half of the working class perished before reaching the age of five.
In the meantime, “The Thames stank so terribly in the summers of 1858 and 1859 that it reached “the pinnacle of a historic event… for months on end, the topic nearly monopolized the public publications’.”
(1923, Winslow)
The city of London was not alone in its predicament.
“The filth and waste accumulate in the streets to a depth sometimes of two or three feet,” according to an 1865 report from New York.
Inspectors discovered over 1,200 instances of smallpox and over 2,000 cases of typhus during a two-week assessment of tenements in New York’s sixteenth district.
(1923, Winslow)
In 1850, tuberculosis killed 300 people per 100,000 in Massachusetts, while infant mortality was over 200 per 1,000 live births.
Hanlon and Pickett (Hanlon and Pickett, 1984)
In an urban culture, earlier tactics of isolation and quarantine during specific disease outbreaks were clearly insufficient.
Isolating congested slum dwellers or quarantining folks who couldn’t afford to cease working was just impossible.
(1983, Wohl)
It became evident that diseases were not only imported from other countries, but also developed within.
“The assumption that pandemic disease offered only sporadic risks to an otherwise healthy social order was shattered by the nineteenth-century industrial revolution.”
1987 (Fee)
Industrialization, with its overworked workforce and congested living quarters, resulted in a population that was more susceptible to disease as well as conditions that allowed disease to spread more easily.
(Wohl, 1983) Urbanization and the resulting concentration of dirt were thought to be a cause of sickness in and of itself.
“In the lack of particular etiological notions, the social and physical conditions associated with urbanization were thought to be equally responsible for the degradation of vital physiological processes and early death.”
(1972, Rosenkrantz)
Simultaneously, public responsibility for the population’s health grew more acceptable and monetarily feasible.
Disease was often thought to be solely the misfortune of the poor and immoral in bygone eras.
The plague had previously been thought to be a poor man’s disease, with the wealthy being able to retire to country estates and effectively isolate themselves.
It became clear in the urbanized nineteenth century that the wealthy could not avoid contact with the destitute.
“It became more clear to the wealthy that they could no longer overlook the condition of the poor; the proximity of the gold coast and the slum was too near.”
(1986, Goudsblom)
And the spread of contagious disease was not selective in these cities.
Almost every family had a kid who died as a result of diphtheria, smallpox, or other contagious diseases.
Diseases became an indicator of a society problem as well as a personal one as a result of awful social and environmental conditions and the continual threat of disease propagation.
“Poverty and sickness could no longer be dismissed as personal shortcomings.”
1987 (Fee)
This viewpoint covered not just infectious disease but also mental disorder.
Insanity came to be seen as a cultural failing, produced by physical, moral, and social difficulties, at least in part.
The Evolution of Public Health Activities
One of the most well-known figures in the sanitary reform movement is Edwin Chadwick, a London lawyer and secretary of the Poor Law Commission in 1838.
The commission performed examinations of the life and health of the London working class in 1838 and the entire country in 1842 under Chadwick’s direction.
The General Report on the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population of Great Britain “was a damning and fully documented indictment of the appalling conditions in which masses of the working people were compelled to live, and die, in the industrial towns and rural areas of the Kingdom,” according to the report.
1984 (Chave)
The average age at death for the gentry was 36 years, 22 years for businessmen, and barely 16 years for laborers, according to Chadwick.
Hanlon and Pickett (Hanlon and Pickett, 1984)
Chadwick presented what became known as the “sanitary notion” as a solution to the problem.
His treatment was founded on the premise that ailments are caused by bad air produced by waste decomposition.
As a result, it was required to construct a drainage system to remove sewage and garbage in order to eliminate sickness.
To achieve this purpose, Chadwick advocated appointing a national board of health, local boards in each area, and district medical officers.
1984 (Chave)
Chadwick’s report was divisive, but many of his recommendations were subsequently incorporated into the Public Health Act of 1848.
The report, which influenced later public health developments in England and the United States, documented the extent of disease and suffering in the population, promoted sanitation and engineering as methods of disease control, and laid the groundwork for public infrastructure to combat and prevent contagious disease.
Similar experiments were being conducted in the United States.
Local sanitary assessments were done in numerous cities, partly inspired by Chadwick.
A survey undertaken by Lemuel Shattuck, a Massachusetts bookseller and statistician, is the most well-known of them.
In 1850, his Massachusetts Sanitary Commission Report was published.
Shattuck compiled vital statistics on the Massachusetts population, highlighting regional disparities in illness and mortality rates.
He attributed the disparities to urbanization, notably the foulness of the air caused by garbage degradation in densely populated regions, and an unethical way of life.
He demonstrated that the city’s bad living conditions posed a threat to the entire population.
“Even those who tried to keep their dwellings clean and decent were thwarted in their efforts to avoid disease if the behavior of others attracted epidemics to arrive.”
(1972, Rosenkrantz)
Shattuck believed that immorality had a significant impact on susceptibility to illness—and that drinking and laziness did often lead to bad health in the slums—but that these conditions were dangerous to everyone.
Furthermore, Shattuck discovered that individuals most likely to be afflicted by sickness were also those who failed to take personal responsibility for the cleanliness and sanitation of their surroundings, either due to ignorance or a lack of concern.
(1972, Rosenkrantz)
As a result, he believed that environmental duty belonged to the city or the state.
In its “Plan for a Sanitary Survey of the State,” Shattuck’s Report of the Massachusetts Sanitary Commission suggested a comprehensive public health system for the state.
New census schedules, regular surveys of local health conditions, supervision of water supplies and waste disposal, special studies on specific diseases, such as tuberculosis and alcoholism, health provider education in preventive medicine, local sanitary associations for collecting and disseminating information, and the establishment of a state board of health and local boards of health to enforce sanitary regulations were among the recommendations made in the report.
(Rosenkrantz, 1972; Winslow, 1923)
Shattuck’s report was extensively disseminated when it was released, but nothing was done as a result of the political instability at the time.
“From the printer’s hand, the report fell flat.”
However, in the years following the Civil War, special agencies became a more typical way of dealing with societal issues.
In 1869, Massachusetts established a state board of health.
The establishment of this body reflected a trend toward stronger governance rather than new information regarding disease causes and control.
Nonetheless, Shattuck’s evidence was used to support the board’s existence.
Many of Shattuck’s proposals for building a public health system were used by the board.
(Hanlon and Pickett, 1984; Rosenkrantz, 1972)
Shattuck’s report, despite being widely ignored at the time of its publication, has now come to be regarded as one of the most foresighted and significant texts in the history of the American public health system.
Many of the principles and practices he advocated were later deemed essential to public health.
Shattuck also established the need of keeping records and important information.
In 1848, John Griscom of New York released The Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of New York.
The New York City Health Department, the first public health department, was established in 1866 as a result of this report.
Boards of health were founded in Louisiana, California, the District of Columbia, Virginia, Minnesota, Maryland, and Alabama during this time period.
(Hanlon and Pickett, 1984; Fee, 1987)
By the end of the nineteenth century, 40 states and a number of local governments had created health departments.
Despite the fact that the particular processes of diseases are still unknown, collective intervention against contagious disease has proven to be effective.
Cholera, for example, was understood to be a watery disease at the time, but the exact agent of infection remained unknown.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the sanitary reform movement brought more water to cities, first through private contractors and then through reservoirs and municipal water supplies, but its utility was determined more by its availability for washing and fire protection than by its purity for consumption.
(1956, Blake)
Despite this, the New York Board of Health’s sanitary efforts in 1866, which included inspections, immediate case reporting, complaint investigations, evacuations, and cleaning of valuables and living quarters, limited a cholera outbreak to a few cases.
“Observers agreed that the epidemic’s mildness was the consequence of careful preparation and hard effort by the new health board, not a stroke of luck.”
(1962, Rosenberg)
During the 1866 pandemic, cities without a public framework for monitoring and combating the disease fared much worse.
Assignment: Background Of The Public Health Issue
During this time, numerous public institutions for the care of the mentally sick were established.
Dorothea Dix, a retired Maine schoolteacher, is the most well-known figure in the mental health reform movement.
Communities who were unable to place their destitute mentally ill individuals in more appropriate institutions in the early nineteenth century used Poor Law practices to place them in municipal jails and almshouses.
Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Dix led a movement to bring attention to the terrible treatment of mentally ill persons in jails and advocated for the creation of new public facilities to care for the insane.
Mental disease was once thought to be a combination of genetic traits, physical issues, and social, intellectual, moral, and economic failures in the nineteenth century.
Despite prejudice that poor and foreign-born people were more likely to be mentally ill, it was believed that moral treatment in a compassionate social setting could cure mental disease.
In the long term, Dix and others claimed, institutional care was less expensive for the community.
In a mental institution, the mentally ill could be treated and healed, obviating the need for ongoing public assistance.
Dix’s efforts resulted in the establishment of 32 public institutions.
The nineteenth-century social reform movement created the notion of governmental responsibility for the impoverished mentally ill, notwithstanding the fact that moral treatment was less successful than planned.
(Foley and Sharfstein, 1983; Grob, 1966)
The growth of public health agencies and institutions was aided by new ideas about illness etiology and social responsibility.
Social action looked to be an efficient strategy to control diseases as environmental and social causes of diseases were recognized.
When health became more than just an individual duty, public boards, agencies, and institutions were formed to defend citizens’ health.
The foundation for the establishment of public health organizations was sanitary and social change.
Assignment: Background Of The Public Health Issue
In the United States, public health agencies and institutions began at the municipal and state levels.
The Marine Hospital Service, a system of public hospitals for the care of merchant seafarers, was the extent of the federal government’s involvement in health.
Because merchant sailors were not citizens of their respective countries, the federal government assumed responsibility for their health care.
In 1879, a national board of health was established to take over the responsibilities of the Marine Hospital Service, but the board only survived until 1883 due to opposition from the Marine Hospital Service and numerous southern states (Anderson, 1985)
By the late nineteenth century, various state boards of health, state health departments, and local health departments had been established.
Hanlon and Pickett (Hanlon and Pickett, 1984)