Page 4 - Is enough being done for the advocacy of Health Promotion in low-to-middle income community settings?
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In short, the question at hand asks if enough is being done to promote health in middle-
income to low-income communities and in my opinion, I say... no and the reason why I say
no is because of the facts that will be presented below.
As stated in the mini presentation the definition of health promotion is and would be again
: the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve, their health
briefly “stated” ((WHO), 2021) and this includes the physical, social and mental wellbeing of
the person\people and, to reach a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being,
an individual or group must be able to identify and to realize aspirations, to satisfy needs,
and to change or cope with the environment. Health is, therefore, seen as a resource for
everyday life, not the objective of living which we (I) do not see in low to middle- income
communities reason being firstly, the amount of obese people that stay there, crimes due
to boredom because there aren’t any kinds of activities to do anymore or never were there,
or acting out because of mental health misunderstanding , lower life expectancy, socially it
is just as bad and evidently this can be seen through xenophobic attacks, better yet the
recent lootings that were all over the media etc.
However, the benefits of health promotion in communities especially if they were to be
present and if enough was to be done in the middle to low-income communities would be
according to (Miller, 2018) universally, less cases of domestic and gang altercations, better
mental health especially during the times that we are in due to the pandemic, better
overall life expectancy within the communities, For older adults specifically the senior
citizens , the programs can improve quality of life; increase self-efficacy; increase or
maintain independence, positive health behaviours, or mobility; reduce disability; and
reduce pain. Furthermore, in whole, there would be provision of more efficient use of
available resources; facilitation of partnership development and community/clinical
linkages; provision of better health outcomes for clients; offering a greater ease of
replication and dissemination programs; and a greater opportunity for varied funding
sources should the communities become big in the health promotions and yet again all
this we do not see in these communities to the fullest extent respectfully.
The factors and challenges that influence health promotion summed up (especially in these
communities) is / are due to lack of government support, secondly the more recent
pandemic that has been present for a while now, has taken a toll of health promotion.
Again, unwilling community members also pose a great disadvantage. Ignorance too is also
a factor that has influenced the attitude toward health promotion. Education systems do
not support health promotion which if it was to be indoctrinated in the youth’s minds at an
early age, there would be evident change as well as better bodied individuals in regards to
physical fitness. Mental health stigma also attributes to the attitude towards health
promotion thus many do not realise that through health promotion, many can benefit from
the experience.
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