DISCUSSION PAPER

Health in Australia

Health in Australia

Introduction

In this paper, I am going to discuss two topics: One Is health merely the absence of disease? Second is a social determinant of health. Health is the major concern for all the people. “Am I healthy?” is the question we all care about. However, what is health? How is health measured? How the social issues impact on health? How can we continue to manage our health condition and improve it gradually? In this paper I am going to discuss about those questions.

Discussion

Health from socio-cultural & political perspectives

A sociocultural perspective of health is basically a system of investigating physical and health activity related issues and a perception through which it understand content of (NHIA) which is stands for National Health Information Agreement. Usually, the fundamentals of a sociocultural viewpoint are concerned with social and power relations, economic and political factors, and subordinate groups. The feature refers to shared behavior of acting and thinking (values, ideas, behaviors, beliefs), which vary from one to another culture. In the past National Health Information Agreement (NHIA) has largely provided a number of young people with the knowledge and tools of psychological sciences, biophysical, and medico scientific to examine and understand physical and health activity problems, a sociocultural perspective utilize ways and knowledge of thinking drawn from cultural and sociology studies. These disciplines offer particularly different activities with physical and health activity problems.

In a political perspective healthcare laws and regulations in Australia may create several problems for poor and needy people because they need proper documentation of health care insurance for treatment of health. Health is a basic necessity. This necessity cannot be taken away from someone only on the basis of their legal status in the country. This is wrong from a humanitarian point of view. According to the statistics for the year 2009, majority of people in Australia were uninsured, which deprived them of availing the substantial and imperative facilities such as health care, for preserving their health. Australia is one of the countries where people need to insure them before getting any treatment regarding health.

Health as the absence of disease

In this paper the first part “Is health merely the absence of disease?” by discussing this part and understanding the definition of health and to know how health is being measured are very important. “Health” is basically defined in many ways. According to many researches the term health is used when all the body parts works in balance. It is basically used when the general condition of human's body, spirit, and mind is free from all the injury, pain, or illness (Blaxter, 2010). Maintaining and achieving good health is basically a constant process which is formed by progression of healthcare practices and knowledge including personal strategies and prepared intrusion for staying healthy. The World Health Organization has a definition of health in 1948, “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (Killion 2010, ...