Role and Purpose of Advocacy in the Health Care Delivery System

Introduction
Advocacy in health care refers to the action of promoting and fostering social, economical, political and educational changes that reduce the risk of suffering of individuals and communities by implementing preventive strategies, increasing health literacy, and boosting access to care and health equity (Earnest, Wong & Federico, 2010). Health care advocacy agents can thus address health outcomes by advocating for changes to the current practices, environments, awareness, and access to care that populations face. This paper will discuss health care advocacy at the local, regional and international levels, the challenges and opportunities that exists in international healthcare advocacy and the ways these challenges can be addressed.
How Health Care Advocacy Agents Address Health Outcomes
The role and purpose of advocacy in the health care delivery system is to help to better ensure that the patient receives the type of quality care he or she needs no matter where he is in the world. Advocates are there to promote quality care, improve systems of care, and foster and facilitate the application of preventive care. Without advocates, patients and populations will have no one to support them, back them, fight for them, and work to improve their situations with respect to how they receive care and the extent to which they have access to care.
Local
Two ways that health care advocacy agents can address health outcomes at the local level are 1) by working with local groups to protect and improve access to care for uninsured patients in the community, and 2) by working with local school boards to promote a health curriculum to improve the health literacy of children so as to combat the obesity epidemic. The former would focus on increasing access to care and the latter would focus on increasing preventive care.
Regional
Two ways that health care advocacy agents can address health outcomes at the regional level are 1) by engaging in patient advocacy, and 2) promoting a framework for preventive care among health partners in their region. Patient advocacy is about ensuring that every patient is served justly and has his or her needs met in accordance with the cultural views and beliefs that the patient has (Ahmadinejad, Abbaszadeh & Davoodvand, 2016).
International
Two ways that health care advocacy agents can address health outcomes at the international level are 1) by promoting a more comprehensive application of human rights for patients, and 2) by reducing health disparities through the promotion of international collaboration to bring health care changes to countries where access to quality care is limited by lack of infrastructure. Promoting human rights is an important advocacy practice at the international level, as Benatar (2013) shows.
Challenges and Opportunities in Addressing International Healthcare Advocacy
Challenges in addressing international healthcare advocacy include raising disease awareness, meeting the unmet needs of patients, and overcoming cultural obstacles that may prohibit or prevent access to quality care among certain populations. Public policies and issues of reimbursement are also causes of concern and figure as legitimate challenges in numerous countries that do not already have an established health care system designed to protect the rights of patients and ensure the human rights of all persons.
Some other international challenges include the fact that a variety of rules and regulations exist among all the different nations of the world with respect to how nurse-patient interaction should be conducted, just as there are various parameters for defining health issues from one nation to another (WHO, 2015). Language barriers serve as another challenge, as does a lack of personnel and infrastructure. Cultural differences also play a part in the big challenge that health care advocates face when trying to improve health outcomes at the international stage. As culture influences so many aspects of governance, from perceptions of health to policies that are implemented to raise awareness about health and achieve health literacy, address the cultural differences among nations and finding common ground to build upon is one of the biggest challenges of all.
Opportunities to overcome these challenges do exist. For instance, the sharing of knowledge among stakeholders helps to speed progress, and in today’s digital age, communication is easier to effect than ever before in human history. Though the digital divide can represent a further obstacle to communication in some parts of the world, all stakeholders who have the power to make policy changes can be contacted and engaged via the communication tools available to health care advocates today.
Cultural issues can also be overcome by applying Hofstede’s model of cultural dimensions, which can help stakeholders to understand and appreciate the different perspectives that nations bring to the health care field. Transcultural nursing is based on the concept of developing cultural competencies, and when it comes to addressing the cultural challenges there is enough research and information available about other peoples and cultures that understanding should be easily acquired, especially in this digital age, wherein so much information is so readily available.
Further opportunities abound thanks to the international relationship among many countries today the world over. European countries are able to communicate with Middle Eastern countries, American countries, and eastern countries and vice versa through organizational and institutional channels, government channels, non-governmental channels, and through social media. The opportunities to share knowledge, communicate, and spread ideas abound.
Ways the Challenges May be Addressed
Two ways the challenges may be addressed are 1) to use digital media and platforms to increase health literacy among the international community, as the World Health Organization (2016) has shown is possible; and 2) to promote through governmental channels an international standard of quality care that should be implemented internationally to help certain health outcomes be achieved more effectively. For instance, the epidemic of drug abuse could be addressed in such a manner by promoting an international standard of preventive care that the united nations of the world could begin to implement in accordance with regulations from their governments that hold pharmaceutical companies accountable and that hold doctors and nurses accountable for over-prescribing in the same way bartenders are held accountable for over-serving patrons.
The use of digital media to engage in advocacy can be especially helpful in any case, as digital media is now the preferred media of much of the world. It is the easiest way to communicate and share information, and more people today have access to digital media than was the case two decades ago. This means that digital media should be used as a primary means of interacting with other advocates and stakeholders in the health care industry worldwide.
Conclusion
Advocates in the health care delivery system are crucial for improving the health outcomes of populations at the local, regional and international levels. Advocates are ones who side with the patient and the population, who put the needs of the patient and the population at the front and center of health care delivery systems. They identify the needs of the patient/population, advocate on their behalf by lobbying for governmental policy changes or implementation of new regulations, increase benefits such as reimbursement and/or access to care, and to increase awareness about health risks, ways to improve health, and how to prevent issues such as diabetes or heart disease from negatively impacting lives.
Personal Thoughts
What I learned from completing this assignment is that the health care industry and field really owes a lot to advocates who are willing to work on behalf of the people who need care in order to improve their lives and make the communities as well as the wider world a better place. Health advocates have to be good communicators, using the tools and messages that will best help to address the issues that affect people. They also have to be able to show a cultural understanding at the international level (though this may even be needed at the local level, as the global population has made even today’s communities much more diverse than they used to be).References
Ahmadinejad, F., Abbaszadeh, A., & Davoodvand, S. (2016). Patient advocacy from the clinical nurses\\\\' viewpoint: a qualitative study. Journal of medical ethics and history of medicine, 9(5).
Benatar, S. R. (2013). Global Health and Justice: R e?examining our Values. Bioethics,  27(6), 297-304.
Earnest, M. A., Wong, S. L., & Federico, S. G. (2010). Perspective: physician advocacy: what is it and how do we do it?. Academic medicine, 85(1), 63-67.
World Health Organization (WHO). (2015). Global Health Ethics Key issues Global Network of WHO Collaborating Centres for Bioethics. Retrieved from: http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/164576/9789240694033_eng.pdf;jsessionid=BF56A5C93A3B735876DBBF060A0652FC?sequence=1
World Health Organization. (2016). Online public hearing to help inform the scope of the forthcoming WHO guidelines on health policy and system support to optimize community based health worker programs. Retrieved from: http://www.who.int/hrh/news/2016/pico_form/en/