Health policy

Health policy refers to the collection of plans, laws, regulations, decisions, procedures, practices, and activities undertaken by a society for the benefit of the overall well-being of its people. Many aspects of a health policy are related to improving the physical health of the population—for example, ensuring the availability of public health clinics. Others may be part of an overall plan to improve health, such as providing financial support to lower-income populations for food or scholarships to those who want to become physicians in underserved areas. Some aspects of health policy may have less obvious connections to health. For example, replacing city buses with hybrid vehicles will cut down on pollution and improve air quality, which directly affects the health of individuals. Health policies affect governments and people worldwide.

Background

The World Health Organization (WHO) has defined health as more than the absence of disease. It is considered to be a state of mental, physical, and social well-being. Good health is generally said to be an essential part of living a full, meaningful, and productive life. Conversely, lack of health—whether the struggle is with impaired physical, mental, or emotional health—usually has a significant negative impact on productivity and happiness.

The health of citizens is important to government entities at the local, regional, and national levels. If the overall health of a population or a segment of a population is poor, both the people themselves and the government will be impacted. Government entities may experience lack of productivity from its citizens and may incur costs to either tend to the health of their people or deal with the consequences of their citizens' poor health. As a result, nearly every government entity establishes policies to attempt to maintain and improve public health. These may vary greatly depending on the resources available and the size of the population. However, even small communities form health policies.

Ancient civilizations had various policies in place to protect health and provide assistance to those in need of health services. For instance, as ancient nomadic people began to settle in permanent or semipermanent communities, rules were made to protect the health of the people. Many religious prohibitions such as eating certain foods, ritual washing, and avoiding areas where the dead were buried were essentially ancient health policies. The banned foods were often those that could cause significant illness, washing was associated with better health, and dead bodies could carry contaminants that could affect the living. The policies related to the ostracizing of people with leprosy—while harsh—were aimed at preventing the spread of disease.

The ancient Greeks protected and promoted health by encouraging exercise and building public facilities for carrying water, bathing, and disposing of human waste. As early as the ninth century, Muslim civilizations and others built hospitals and other facilities to support improved health. These facilities were the forerunners of many contemporary projects that support health policies in the twenty-first century.

Overview

Many factors affect the health of a population. Not only do these include an individual person's genetic makeup but also influences that have affected the individual during their lifetime. Some of these can include individual choices and behaviors (stress, smoking, abuse of drugs or alcohol, diet, or exercise); social and physical environment factors (education, housing, pollution, violence, natural disasters, or cultural and religious influences); available interventions (laws that require protective equipment such as seatbelts and helmets; programs to encourage weight loss, smoking cessation, and sobriety; and assistance with food, medical care, mental health assistance, and other services). This is in addition to programs that directly impact health, such as food and drug safety programs, access to health-care services, and support for hospitals and other centers that provide health-care assistance.

Any public policy that affects these factors is considered a public health policy. Decisions on these policies can be made at any level of government. These policies can take the form of laws, regulations, legal decisions, and operational decisions. For instance, a national government can pass laws to make certain vaccinations mandatory. A state or regional government can provide funding to offset the cost of prescription drugs to senior citizens. A local government can ban smoking in its parks. A school district can prohibit sugary snacks from being sold or distributed on its grounds.

Health policies also include efforts by the private sector. These sometimes supplement or even replace actions from government agencies. They include efforts of private citizens, businesses, nonprofit organizations, religious organizations, and others to promote and provide services that improve the health of a population. For example, a nonprofit organization may operate a health clinic, a religious organization may run a food pantry, or a grocery store may donate excess food to those in need. These efforts are important to the overall health of a community because they fill the policy gaps left by the state and federal governments.

Oversight by national governments can protect people from significant harm by regulating exposure to harmful substances in food, drugs, and the environment and providing services to large segments of the population. Regional and state agencies can protect smaller segments of the population who are struggling with factors specific to these areas, such as unemployment. Local governments can respond to concerns unique to different geographic areas. The private sector can identify gaps in these services and lobby government agencies to address these problems. At all levels, another concern of public health policy remained health-care equity and accessibility.

Bibliography

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Navarro, V. "What Is a National Health Policy?" International Journal of Health Services, vol. 37, no. 1, 2007, pp. 1–14.

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