Access to Healthcare Services and Public Health
Public health is a science discipline associated with the improvement and protection of the health of individuals and their communities. Public health is the foremost discipline that is concerned with the well-being of individuals (Shneider, 2016). Everyone depends on public health for prevention, battling and control of infectious diseases. Public health is a daily norm in our lives, practiced from basic home practices through minor outbreaks to a major pandemic. I was born to a stringent family, a nurse and a farmer, who solely believed personal hygiene, was the remedy of flu and minor illnesses. Maintaining personal hygiene and clean spaces were and remains to be an elementary form of public health. On the other hand, access to health services is of much significance for the maintenance and promotion of health, managing and controlling diseases, preventing unnecessary mortality, and achieving health equity for a certain community.
Traditionally, public health considered the access to health services to play a major role in handling and treating sickness among individuals, however, today access to health services is considerably important in the delivering of preventive medicine and health interventions in realizing better healthcare that provides effective interventions for different conditions that contribute to increased mortality among populations such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer and malaria (HealthyPeople, 2020). Access to health services remains a main issue in the current times.
Many factors influence access to healthcare services; they include individual factors, such as demographic characteristics of a place, health insurance status and individual health beliefs. Additionally, community-level factors such as the development of an area largely contribute to the state of healthcare access in a region. Public health, through agencies and organizations, factor in to try and address the disparities associated with access to healthcare services. During my childhood times, access to healthcare services and public health wasn’t pronounced compared to the current status of health services. Living in rural set-up, the access to healthcare services faced major barriers that barred the residents, our family-inclusive, from confidently and conveniently access services such as emergency care, public health, dental care, and primary care. The neighbourhood was void of necessary and appropriate healthcare services for sufficient access (Rural Health Information Hub, 2020). Some of the barriers included lack of financial abilities to pay for healthcare services through insurance, residents lacked the belief that they would receive quality care, lack of confidence from the patient for lack of profound English speaking linguistics, and most of the patients lacked trust that they can get the services comfortably without the interference of their private life or confidentiality (Gulliford, 2017). Additionally, the American rural community consists of a poor transportation networks, health illiteracy among community members, barriers to healthcare providers such as workforce shortages and lack of proper health insurance in place.
Living in rural Texas, there was lower access to healthcare services characteristic of factors of quality, proximity, and affordability as compared to the urban set-up. Back then, travelling to a medical facility to acquire healthcare services was costly and burdensome for residents from our rural set-up. In one instance, during a rainy season, drainages were clogged, thus patches of stagnant water were all over the neighbourhood and public places. Particularly our junior school was affected the most by the stagnant waters, due to its relatively flat terrain.
Consequently, the unresolved condition resulted in havoc at the boarding school, after infiltrating into clean water systems. Contaminated water in the clean piped water resulted in the outbreak of Giardia, a waterborne disease that affected the intestines of individuals. With no measures in place, the school administration was in panic mode, relying on local medical professionals to contain the outbreak. Access to health services around the school proximity was a challenge, with just a private clinic in town that served as a maternal unit. The general healthcare facility was several miles apart, the school resolved to transport the serious incidences to the nearest general facility roughly 10 miles away. The incident at school spurred different reactions, from the political arena to the clergy. The importance of better access to the healthcare system and the establishment of public health policies were realized.
The new order influenced the construction of a public health facility in the town, which was to serve approximately 200 inpatients per day. Health insurance coverage gained popularity, with individuals acquiring healthcare insurance covers to access services efficiently. In providing easy access to healthcare services, governments have put in place measures such as the United State’s Health Insurance Coverage of 2018 (Erika, 2018). The policy seeks to solve the issue of disparity when accessing healthcare services and public health from the rural and urban set-up. \
Primary care among the rural set-up plays a key role in ensuring the maintenance of best standards for the people. Primary care offers improved health behaviours, care coordination, disease detection and prevention services as well as unnecessary mortality cases such as those induced by cancer and cardiovascular failures. My mom was a nurse back then, who used to work for a local based home care facility in the suburbs. However, now she is old, coupled with respiratory challenges, she has used her healthcare insurance cover to get home care services. The insurance package comes with an interesting package at an affordable cost thus a win for the family.
Access to healthcare services remains a challenge in developing countries, coupled with many challenges such as poor economy, poor transportation and lack of the necessary infrastructure in place. However, governments are realizing the importance of availing healthcare services and public health to its citizens such as maintaining reproductive communication; universal healthcare programs are being launched as a remedy (Aggarwal, 2018).
References
Access to Health Services | Healthy People 2020. (2020). Retrieved 7 June 2020, from https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topics-objectives/topic/Access-to-Health-Services
Aggarwal, A. K. (2018). Partnerships for universal health-care coverage. International Journal of Noncommunicable Diseases, 3(5), 1.
Erika, C., Leonard, M. P. H., Burgess, M. P. P. M., & Paluso, M. P. H. (2018). Access to Health Care Services for Adults in Maine [Policy Brief].
Gulliford, M. (2017). Access to primary care and public health. The Lancet Public Health, 2(12), e532-e533. doi: 10.1016/s2468-2667(17)30218-9
Healthcare Access in Rural Communities Introduction – Rural Health Information Hub. (2020). Retrieved 7 June 2020, from https://www.ruralhealthinfo.org/topics/healthcare-access
Schneider, M. J. (2016). Introduction to public health. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.