Public Community Health Public, Community

Public Community Health

Public, Community and Disaster Health Management

Comparing and contrasting the history and development of public and community health, pertinent dates, significant events.

Public health is widely contingent upon the correlation between two major effectors. For all individuals, there exists an intercession of personal agency and social structure. Between these two considerations rests the individual, whose agency endows her with the ability to make clear and self-guided decisions and to maintain control over her own life. This individual, however, bound to the conditions and pressures of a society and cultural context, must also recognize the impact of structures such as economy, family and ethnicity. These are the factors that would feed into the early history of public health, which though it can be traced back many thousands of years to the efforts by Greek and Roman societies to establish some standardization for treatment of the general public.

In the United States, this history is only 100 years old, with the first glimmer of public responsibility emerging in the early part of the 20th century and only achieving true social importance during President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Here, for the first time, public agencies had been designated with the responsibilities of assisting and elevating those in need in various living contexts, particularly the creation of Social Security. It would not be until the 1960s and the insertion of Medicare would establish the first true federal public health program. Here, "a multiplicity of social protest movements, beginning with the civil rights movement, prompted the expansion of the welfare state through the Great Society programs of the 1960s. (Rosen, xii) the outcome would be an evolving dedication on the part of the government to redress the failures of health which related to financial inequality.

b. Differences and similarities between Public Heath and Community Health and the role of the nurse in each setting

Public Health and Community Health are distinctly similar concepts, though Public Health tends to invoke a more general picture of the needs of populations. Accordingly, public health is conceptually driven toward the interests of the general public, whereas community health tends to serve those at the greatest disadvantage economically. The latter typically encompasses accessible free health clinics, community medical groups and other such agencies, whose nurses will have a direct contact in these contexts with most patients. Here, the nurse's role will be one of primacy in seeing that such treatment is extended. The nurse is, by contrast, a part of a much larger team of practitioners and specialists where public health is concerned. Public Health incorporates "the major problems of health that men have faced have been concerned with community life, for instance, the control of transmissible disease, the control and improvement of the physical environment (sanitation), the provision of water and food of good quality and in sufficient supply, the provision of medical care, and the relief of disability and destitution." (Rosen, 1) in a regard, community health falls within this purview and is a subset to the broader topic of public health.

c. Differences in roles of public and community health nurse and nurse in an acute care setting

The role which is given to the nurse in the public or community health context should be essentially similar to that which is seen in an acute care context. Ethical, practical and medical conditions remain unchanged from one context to the next. However, the nurse will be required to prepare for certain distinctions which do denote a difference. Particularly, nurses in public health settings are less likely to possess the resources and facilities which are afforded those in the acute care setting. This means that in many instances, public health nurses can only function as the front line for consultation, diagnosis and basic treatment. Where more serious concerns become apparent, it is necessary to consider referring patients to emergency room or acute care settings where they may gain access to these greater resources.

d. Disaster Management Plan for your community

A key part of public health is the preemptive preparation which a community or region has in place to contend with potential disasters or threats to public health. In the case of Orange County, the disaster management plan is detailed according to the unique action demanded by individual emergencies. Accordingly, "The Health Disaster Management (HDM) Division coordinates the Agency's emergency response functions related to all-hazards planning, including bioterrorism, pandemic influenza, natural disasters, the county-wide Emergency Medical system for medical emergencies, and other County health-related disasters." (HDOC, 1)