Public Health Management Tradeoffs Values

Question: Describe about the Public Health Management for Tradeoffs Values. Answer: Liverani, Hawkins, Parkhurst (2013) define public health as the art and science of preventing diseases, promotion health and prolonging life by collective efforts of society. Public health management has evolved from mere focus on water purity and sanitation, to a complex multilevel nature. The governments today are seeking to improve decision making in public health management to a more structured and strategic approach. The past decade has witnessed enormous increased in public health expenditure globally. However, most of the public health management decisions are either political or reactive decisions rather than strategic decisions made for long term welfare. Shrimpton, McKie, Hurworth, Bell, Richardson (2008) opines that political and social science theories have established that, decision making processes comprise of tradeoffs between values and competing interests. Thus, when issues are politicised, it affects the decision making process as well. In public health management, the decision depends on government priority, sectoral budgets, government policies, expenditure etc. Further, the governments even do not have a proper methodology or strategy for decision making. For example: The Governments allocate certain amount for prevention of certain diseases, however, the demographics are not taken into consideration (Orton et al., 2011). The ruling government also considers its revenue and pressure from business sectors while making public health decisions. Various countries do not take any actions on smoking in public places due to the revenue from tobacco industry. In some of the countries, certain health related policies are also considered controversial. Public health policies are also introduced as a part of political campaign of various governments. The public health issues relating to diseases, injury, health inequality, prevention etc. first make it to policy agenda of the government. The government analyses the severity of the problem, the affected population and how it can gain politically by the introduction of the policy. Various policies are introduced every year by different governments and when the leaders change, the policies are also changed as per the current government. This affects the long term outputs from the policy (Zardo Collie, 2014). Reactive decision making is also a defective kind of decision making in public health. Various governments try to focus only on current problems and do not consider the long term consequences. For example: In 2000 Labour Government of UK failed to address health inequalities due to its lack of focus, the problem was led to House of Commons which launched enquiry into public health. The results from the enquiry highlighted that, the government was using the resources to fix and mend solutions rather than having a long term approach to decision making (Liverani, Hawkins, Parkhurst, 2013). Public health management should follow a more strategic approach to decision making where it considers the actual health needs of the society and delivers accordingly. Though it is nearly impossible to remove political influences from public health decision making, strategies and framework must be set up which follows a proper methodology for taking public health decisions. Public health management should also follow evidence informed decision making to ensure that resources are utilized efficient and better health outcomes is achieved for the citizens. References Liverani, M., Hawkins, B., Parkhurst, J. (2013). Political and Institutional Influences on the Use of Evidence in Public Health Policy. A Systematic Review.Plos ONE,8(10), e77404. https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0077404 Orton, L., Lloyd-Williams, F., Taylor-Robinson, D., Moonan, M., O'Flaherty, M., Capewell, S. (2011). Prioritising public health: a qualitative study of decision making to reduce health inequalities.BMC Public Health,11(1). https://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-11-821 Shrimpton, B., McKie, J., Hurworth, R., Bell, C., Richardson, J. (2008). Health Care Decisionà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ Making à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚  A Focus Group Study Involving Health Professionals and the General Public.Qualitative Research Journal,8(2), 43-58. https://dx.doi.org/10.3316/qrj0802043 Zardo, P. Collie, A. (2014). Measuring use of research evidence in public health policy: a policy content analysis.BMC Public Health,14(1). https://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-14-496