Pertinent Issues to the delivery of Healthcare

Pertinent Issues to the delivery of Healthcare

Public health policies seek to modify these behaviors, thereby avoiding unnecessary expenditures. In terms of the relative costs of public health and health care services, numerous studies demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of public health strategies such as smoking cessation, weight control, and dental preventive care. Evidence consistently shows a correlation between public health spending and improved mortality rates. Although many health care services also have demonstrable cost-effectiveness, the cumulative effect of our country’s sizeable investment in health care is limited. Even the most optimistic statistics estimate that health care has contributed less than four percent to the decline in mortality since 1900. Furthermore, future investments in medical research and development will produce many more “half way technologies,” which “add small increments to health at large cost.” Because policymakers have deprived public health of stable and adequate funding, there are still substantial gains to be made from investments in health promotion and disease prevention. In contrast, continuing to preferentially fund health care “perpetuates a system that does more and more for fewer people.”Global Health Policy Example

Data indicate that individual behavioral risk factors — e.g., smoking, poor diet, sedentary lifestyle, excessive alcohol consumption, risky sexual behavior, firearms, motor vehicle accidents, and illicit substance abuse — account for nearly 50 percent of all premature deaths in the U.S. each year. It is not surprising then that public health interventions targeting behavior modification have dramatically improved the population’s health. For example, although tobacco still contributes to approximately 18 percent of premature deaths, tobacco-related mortality has been significantly reduced through policies such as cigarette taxes, packet warnings, advertising restrictions, and smoking bans (Simpson, 2007). Global Health Policy Example