Explore your Board of Nursing, State Association (Ct), and/or other state governmental and non-governmental website(s) and identify the most pressing health care concern at the community, local, and/or state level
Explore your Board of Nursing, State Association (Ct) and or other state governmental and non governmental website(s) and identify the most pressing health care concern at the community local and or state level
Discussion Question
Based on the state and non-governmental websites, the most pressing health care concern is the spread of emerging infectious diseases, particularly the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic. While many countries across the world continue to grapple with infections and resurgences based on multiple waves, the United States and most of the states remain the most affected in the world. Responding to outbreaks and threats of emerging infectious diseases is a huge responsibility for the government (Patel & Clark-Ginsberg, 2020) The U.S. leads in infections with 33 million people infected and over 580,000 deaths. As a health care concern at both state and federal level, the spread of Covid-19 remains public health issue that requires interventions like vaccinations that is happening now which has led to considerable decline in the rate of infections. Infectious disease experts continue to warn of new strains and variants that require increased vaccination campaigns to ensure that the public gets herd immunity.
The Covid-19 pandemic is a health advocacy issue because of the need to increase vaccination campaigns and ensure
that all Americans are vaccinated based on the guidelines and recommendations by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Advocacy will increase information availability to the public and convince the skeptics to take vaccines (Wang et al., 2020). Vaccination drive will enhance community’s preparedness and lower the chances of having severe strains of the disease in the future.
Barriers and challenges to successful health policy and advocacy may include limited information about the benefits of vaccines, public awareness about access to the vaccines, and different perspectives, especially personal ideological positions based on political aspects like being a member of a certain political party (Ward et al., 2020). The implication is that policymakers should enhance advocacy strategies to increase accessibility to vaccines.
References
Patel, S. S., & Clark-Ginsberg, A. (2020). Incorporating issues of elderly loneliness into the
Coronavirus Disease–2019 public health response. Disaster medicine and public health preparedness, 14(3), e13-e14.
Wang, C., Horby, P. W., Hayden, F. G., & Gao, G. F. (2020). A novel coronavirus outbreak of
global health concern. The Lancet, 395(10223), 470-473.
Ward, M. P., Li, X., & Tian, K. (2020). Novel coronavirus 2019, an emerging public health
emergency. Transboundary and emerging diseases, 67(2), 469.