Tackling Health Inequity

Tackling Health Inequity Using Primary Health Care and Empowerment Approaches

Tackling Health Inequity Using Primary Health Care and Empowerment Approaches

Introduction

Public Health is defined as the approach in area of medicine that refers to the health of community on the whole. Several healthcare issues that prompted threat to the well being of people are now being resolved. Healthcare professionals are involved in constant struggle to eliminate or at least bring a sharp decline to these issues. Among which health inequity is the major issue that society had struggled with. The inequitable distribution of health services in remote and rural areas affected several countries adversely. The root cause of problem is identified to be inequitable distribution of health experts such as doctors and nurses. Distribution of doctors with a high concentration in urban areas had affected public health in rural areas negatively (Bleich et Al, 2012). Communities in rural areas were served by fewer health professionals than urban city communities. Several social determinates that triggered the healthcare professionals to reside in urban areas and leave rural areas were identified. By controlling these determinants and managing them to yield better results for healthcare framework the problem is now seen to decline and will continue to decline by the end of this decade.

This document describes how the inequity in Healthcare (due to the unequal distribution of health care professional in rural and urban areas) that led to “healthcare gap” between rural and urban areas was tackled. The content of the document is designed to explore how this issue is being addressed using Comprehensive Primary Health Care (CPHC) approach. It focuses on the social determinants that had been primary causes of the issue and how each of them was tackled to bring about all these changes that we can now see in 2030 health care framework (Field & Briggs, 2001).

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Discussion

Health equity is the prospect of having the chance to obtain full health potential. Health inequity is the difference and disparity in health that is avoidable and systematic. Because of several social determinants that are explained later in this document health inequity was seen to augment in previous decade. It surfaced as a critical issue that demanded immediate focus and addressing. It was recognized as the primary reason behind decline in health of aboriginal and native communities. It was further identified as major cause of decrease in health and well being in rural areas and spread of disease like STDs. The increase in mortality and morbidity in rural areas was further seen as a very adverse outcome of this health inequity. Issues like high rate of maternal mortality, infant mortality, cardiovascular diseases, disability etc were seen to emerge. In a nutshell, several health adversities were seen to surface in previous decades in rural areas which highlighted health inequity in a pretty prominent manner (Baum, 2008). A vision was developed by WHO that required countries to bring a sharp decline in health inequity by addressing the factors causing ...