Reflective Essay on the US Healthcare System

Reflective Essay on the US Healthcare System What is right with the U.S. Health Care System Marina Bukhrashvili The national strategy presented in The Affordable Care Act (ACA) seeks to fund prevention and public health. This is an important goal in our nation’s health care system. Prevention services, which include wellness, research, health screening, educational campaigns for preventive benefits and immunization programs, may have a positive effect on decreasing health care costs. To me, this first mandatory fund, also known as the Prevention and Public Health Fund (PPHF), is very important since as I am planning a career path that involves public health and the health of the community. Seventy-six percent of the U.S. health care expenditure are spent on treating preventable chronic diseases (The Hasting Center, 2010). By law, the Prevention Public Health Fund must be used to provide for expanded and sustained national investment in prevention and public health programs to improve health and help restrain the rate of growth in private and public health care costs. (American Public Health Association, 2010). I work in a skilled nursing facility which provides acute rehabilitation services to an elderly population following hospitalization. During an intake interview last winter, I asked an 82 year old female about her immunization history and she reported that â€Å"she never took a flu shot in her life.† And she doesn’t remember ever taking any type of vaccinations. She said that she was afraid that a vaccination would infect her and make her sick and that her sister â€Å"got sick from the flu vaccine.† It has been my experience that a great majority of our patients receive important immunizations for the first time during their stay at our facility. This finding is in line with research that shows that less than 50 percent of adults’ age 65 years or older were up-to-date with immunizations regardless of regular checkups (Department of Human Health Services, 2010). This is the case even though these services are paid for by almost all insurance plans, includ ing Medicare and Medicaid, according to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) (2011). Based on this experience, I feel that the PPHF maybe providing the necessary resources to promote the health of communities and contain health care costs that would arise from treating acute infections. Even though influenza and pneumonia are the fifth major causes of deaths in the country (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2013), the immunization rates are still moderate. Despite all efforts to control health care across, racial, gender and age, the differences in influenza coverage persist. As the focus of health care shifts from post-diagnostic treatment to preventive medicine, making immunizations a part of every person’s health care plan is an essential first step in achieving this goal. Doctors’ offices that treat adult population seem to be a good choice for promoting vaccination but this strategy is not effective in increasing immunization rates for adults since most physicians have busy practices which mainly focus on treating acute illness versus seeing healthy patients for preventive medicine. In addition, according to Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (2009), the leading causes for low immunization rates in the last few years were the high cost of screening, insufficient funds to cover the co-payment or deductibles; lack of knowledge of what health insurance would cover; and lack of health insurance. In addition, many older adults may not have a regular doctor or do not go for a check up on a regular basis. The prohibitive cost was addressed for Medicare beneficiaries by the ACA (2010) to some extent, which broadens the Medicare coverage for preventive services suggested by the USPSTF and eliminates out-of-pocket costs. There is no payment for influenza, pneumococcal and hepatitis B vaccines (Cassidy 2010). Although compliance with influenza vaccination has increased dramatically after Medicare began paying for influenza vaccines for the nation’s older and disabled population and after health reform in 2010, the proportion of older persons receiving this vaccine is still considerably low in elderly populations (CDC, 2013). According to the research (Eurich et al., 2008) some patients benefited from receiving influenza vaccination before they were hospitalized for pneumonia. As a result of passage of Affordable Care Act, most health insurance now covers co-payments for recommended clinical preventive services, which reduces financial cost to beneficiaries, however, the challenge remains to make older adults aware of the value of preventive services and encourage them to get the services they need. All efforts should be made to expand awareness in the community about clinical preventive services and benefits. . Nurses could send reminders to the health care providers to notify patients when the vaccinations are due. Such reminders could be issued on seasonal basis to educate patients about importance about vaccinations during patient encounters such as the registration interview. Educational Seminars can be conducted across various community centers before immunization season begins. Interactions focusing on different ethnic groups may help to find and address their misconceptions about immunizations, if there are any. Nurses will play a key part in the f ulfillment of the mandate of ACA and their expending scope of practice is already shaping the future of healthcare. References Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. National Healthcare Disparities Report 2008. Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; 2009. Available at: www.ahrq.gov/qual/nhdr08/nhdr08.pdf American Public Health Association (2010). Prevention of Public Health Fund. Available at: www.apha.org/advocacy/Health+Reform/PH+Fund/ Cassidy 2010: Cassidy A., Health Affairs and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Health Policy Brief: Preventive Services Without Cost Sharing, Health Affairs, December 28, 2010. Available at: www.healthaffairs.org/healthpolicybriefs/brief.php?brief_id=37 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The State of Aging and Health in America 2013. Atlanta, GA: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, US Dept of Health and Human Services; 2013. Department of Health and Human Services. Healthy People 2020, Older Adult Section, December 2010. Available at: www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topicsobjectives2020/overview.aspx?topicid=31 Eurich, D. C., Marrie, T. J., J, J., M, S. R. (2008). Mortality reduction with Influenza vaccine in patients with Pneumonia outside â€Å"flu† season. American Journal of Respiratory Critical Care Medicine, 178, 527-533 The Hasting Center. Health Care Cost Monitor. Projected Costs of Chronic Diseases, January 22, 2010. Available at: http://healthcarecostmonitor.thehastingscenter.org/kimberlyswartz/projected-costs-of- chronic-diseases/ The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Section 4002: Prevention and Public Health Fund. 111th Congress. Enacted March 23, 2010. Available at: http://housedocs.house.gov/energycommerce/ppacacon.pdf U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. USPSTF A and B Recommendations. Available at: www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/uspsabrecs.htm

Food Critique History Essay

Food history is an interdisciplinary field that examines the history of food, and the cultural, economic, environmental, and sociological impacts of food. Food history is considered distinct from the more traditional field of culinary history, which focuses on the origin and recreation of specific recipes. Food historians look at food as one of the most important elements of cultures, reflecting the social and economic structure of society. Food history is a new discipline, considered until recently a fringe discipline. The first journal in the field, Petits Propos Culinaires was launched in 1979 and the first conference on the subject was the Food & History is a multilingual (French, English, German, Italian and Spanish) scientific journal that has been published since 2003. Food & History is the biannual scientific review of the European Institute for the History and Cultures of Food (IEHCA) based in Tours. It publishes papers about the history and culture of food. The review Food & History is the biannual scientific review of the Institut Europeen d’Histoire et des Cultures de l’Alimentation / European Institute for the History and Culture of Food (IEHCA) in Tours, France. Founded in 2003, it is the first journal in Europe, both in its vocation and concept, specialised in the specific field of food history. Food & History aims at presenting, promoting and diffusing research that focuses on alimentation from an historical and/or cultural perspective. The journal studies food history (from prehistory to the present), food archaeology, and food culture from different points of view. It embraces social, economic, religious, political, agronomical, and cultural aspects of food and nutrition. It deals at the same time with questions of food consumption, production and distribution, with alimentation theories and practices (medical aspects included), with food-related paraphernalia and infrastructures, as well as with culinary practices, gastronomy, and restaurants. Being positioned at the cross-roads of the humanities and social sciences, the review deliberately promotes interdisciplinary research approaches. Although most contributions are concerned with European food history, the journal principally also welcomes articles on other food cultures. Food & History is a fully-fledged academic journal which applies the usual methodical instruments for assessing incoming articles, i. e. a double-blind reviewing process by external referees, recruited from a large and ever-growing intercontinental pool of experts in the field of social and cultural food studies. Food & History belongs to a decreasing spectrum of journals which openly expresses its European and international character by accepting manuscripts in five European languages (English, French, Spanish, Italian, and German). Food & History gains official recognition from the Institut des Sciences Humaines et Sociales of the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) and is indexed by the European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH) of the European Science Foundation (History category B). Food & History can be published thanks to the financial support from the Ministere de l’Education nationale, Ministere de l’enseignement superieur et de la recherche, Universite Francois-Rabelais de Tours, and the Conseil Regional du Centre. [edit] History Food and History was created by a network of academic researchers and students, with the help of the French Ministry for National Education and the University of Tours. The journal is sustained by the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)[1] and is cited by the European Science Foundation in its European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH)[2]. The launch of Food & History was on the one hand a logical fruit of the foundation of the European Institute for the History of Food in December 2000 in Strasbourg (redefined in 2005 as European Institute for the History and Culture of Food), and on the other hand a clear manifestation of the gradual breakthrough of social and cultural food studies as an independent field of research during the first decades of the 21st century. The emergence of this sub-discipline had, of course, been anticipated in an impressive record of food-related research, conducted by scholars from adjacent fields, such as e. . economic history, agricultural history, history of the body etc. However, the scholars behind these pioneering works were generally operating on a rather individual base and they would not have defined themselves as food historians. It was only with the foundation of the journal Food and Foodways in 1986 and of the International Commission for Research into European Food History (ICFREH) by Hans-Jurgen Teuteberg in Munster 1989 that a first infrastructural framework for social and cultural ood studies was provided. In the decades around the turn of the century, a lot of new food-related research initiatives became visible, thus demonstrating the vitality of this research area. In 1997, the Department of History at the University of Adelaide established a Research Centre for the History of Food and Drink. In 2001, a new web-journal The Anthropology of Food was launched and in 2004 the American Association for the Study of Food and Society re-launched a journal, entitled Food, Culture and Society. Around the turn of the century, due to – amongst others – new appointments in the editorial board, the research interest of the journal Food and Foodways changed in a two-fold sense: on the one hand â€Å"it shifted away from familiar disciplines (history, sociology, ethnology) toward ‘unexpected’ones (communication sciences, linguistics, tourism)†, on the other hand it became increasingly dominated by Anglo-Saxon input, especially from scholars from the USA, whereas the influence of the traditional French research schools significantly diminished. Some scholars argue that this ‘exotic’ publication strategy of Food and Foodways may have led to the launch of the new food history journal Food & History. Be that as it may, it was from the very start of the European Institute for the History of Food obvious that this new Europe-wide food research initiative should be accordingly accompanied by the launch of a new publication platform. And so happened: three years after its foundation, the IEHA announced the introduction of a new journal, Food & History, which still appears under the aegis of IEHCA, represented by its director Francis Chevrier (series editor). It started with a 7-persons board, consisting of four historians, one sinologist, one sociologist and Secretary Christophe Marion. As from volume 4. 2 (publication year 2006), the editorial board was almost doubled, with the addition of a philologist, archaeologist, classicist, and three historians. After a transition period and the appointment of a new secretary in 2007, the journal has been increasingly professionalised, amongst others by the introduction of a new uniform style sheet (link) and by the application of a comprehensive peer reviewing system (starting with volume 5. 1). These assessments are usually carried out on an entirely honorary base. However, by way of acknowledgement, the names of external referees are regularly published, usually in the last issue of each volume. Another development that bears witness of the increasing professionalisation of the journal was the change in its direction. During the initial period, Massimo Montanari had served as editor in chief, but in 2008 the editorial board declared itself openly in favour of a new dual leading structure, which rotates among the board members, giving each tandem a triennial turn (which is once renewable for another turn of three years). During a transitional year (2009), Montanari was accompanied by Allen Grieco and Peter Scholliers, who in the subsequent year took over the torch of the journals direction. Yet another step towards further professionalisation was the introduction of a group of corresponding members as from 2010, with the aim to represent the journal’s interests in different world regions and to establish a permanent flow of food research related information between these regions and the journal’s â€Å"headquarters†.

Health Behavior Change Sleep Deprivation - 949 Words

1. Identify Issue Health Behavior Change Sleep Deprivation is the issue that prevalent among university’s first year students. According to Hershner Chervin (2014) , half of the university respondents indicated daytimes sleepiness and 70% attain insufficient sleep . In order to maintain a good sleeping pattern , it is necessary to develop a good sleep hygiene. Good Sleep hygiene is defined as the ability to obtain good nighttime sleep and full daytime alertness ( National Sleep Foundation , 2016).In other words , an increase and regulation of daily amount of sleep are important. National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (2012) stated that the recommended amount of sleep for adults is 7-8 hours a day. However , personally my weekday’s sleeping hours is approximately 5.5 hours everyday. Sleep Deprivation may trigger mood disturbance like depression and anxiety , decrease in academic performance due to reducing memory and concentration and increase calorie consumption (Trockel, Barnes, Egget, 2000).Moreover , the release of cortisol can depress the immune system which make oneself more vulnerable to illness like cold or fever and the increase of upper respiratory infections like headaches can also be seen in university student with sleep deprivation(Irwin, 2002). Importantly, more health consequences of sleep deprivation such as greater use of marijuana , smoking and alcohol abuse are germane to university students (Kloss et al., 2016). In order to prevent chronicShow MoreRelatedThe Dangers Of Lack Of Sleep Deprivation913 Words   |  4 Pagesof Lack of Sleep in Highschoolers Sleep deprivation in high school students is creating a long list of problems in their health and academic areas. 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Academic Integrity Essay - 1305 Words

Academic Integrity and Honor Codes in Schools In todays society, there is a trend being set by both college and high school students. The trend is moving from academic integrity to academic dishonesty. What exactly is the difference between academic integrity versus dishonesty? I believe that academic integrity is a state of pride and belief in ones own knowledge and work. It is taking what you know and applying it in a scholarly systematic way without help from any other source that would make any part of the work not their own. It is taking pride and credit for work that is completely theres. Academic dishonesty on the other hand is taking someone elses work and claiming it as your own. So given the shift in trends in this†¦show more content†¦First, this gives students more time to spend on other subjects or extracurriculars because a paper that would normally take them three hours to write now takes them thirty minutes. However, there are downfalls to this as well. Even though cheating may seem like a good idea an d maintains their good grades for their parents, teachers, and themselves, what are they actually learning from that assignment? An assignment that was given to make them smarter and more competent in a given are has been completely wasted. So in essence the education that they are so worried about obtaining and maintaining is the education that they are throwing away. A third reason leading to the increase in academic dishonesty is the pure and simple fact that once a student cheats on a paper or any type of homework assignment and does not get caught and reprimanded for their actions, the more that student believes that they can keep doing it without getting caught. The more and more that a student cheats and gets away with it the more the student feels that they are invisible and can continue doing it. This is a sad occasion when this happens because the student is only hurting themselves. 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The code of honesty set by the college states, â€Å"that I pledge that all test taken and work submitted by me will be my original own ideas and of my own efforts.† (Student Handbook, 2011) Showing honesty in anyRead MoreAcademic Ethics : Academic Integrity1080 Words   |  5 Pages Academic Integrity Name Institution Academic Integrity Any person who is in academics has to abide by some norms, so that he can carry out the academic work with morality and conscience. By definition, academic integrity stands for the ethical policy or the moral code of the realm of academics. Upholding academic integrity is the responsibility of the students, researchers or academicians. Any person related to academics has to be honest in his or her approach, and that shouldRead MoreAcademic Ethics And Academic Integrity Essay1276 Words   |  6 PagesAcademic ethics are the moral codes or the shared standards of an academic enterprise and the core of its success (Occidental College, 2016). Basically, academic ethics require each student, to be honest, responsible, fair, respectful, give credit where it is due, turn in their original work, and etc. (Michigan State University, n.d.). Academic integrity requires students to do their own work without unauthorized help from others, cheating, lying, plagiarizing, and stealing (Valdosta State UniversityRead MoreAcademic Integrity 141289 Words   |  6 Pagesand importance of ‘Academic Integrity’ in assignment completed by undergraduate students. Introduction On a research paper, how much information can you â€Å"borrow† with or without citing the original author?   How do you cite the resources you â€Å"borrowed† or quoted from the original author?   Will anyone know if you submit a friend’s research paper?   No one can see you taking an online test from your living room – should that change how you take a test?   Who is hurt by academic dishonesty? Who caresRead MoreWhat Is Academic Integrity?1483 Words   |  6 PagesWhat is Academic Integrity? There are only two kinds of men in this world: Honest men and dishonest men. †¦ Any man who says the world owes him a living is dishonest. The same god that made you and me made this Earth. And He planned it so that it would yield every single that the people on need. But He was careful to plan it so that it would yield every single thing that it would only yield up its wealth in exchange for the labor of man. Any man who tries to share in that wealth without contributingRead MoreThe Ethics Of Academic Integrity1225 Words   |  5 PagesAcademic integrity continues to be an important issue of public concern especially in higher education institutions. There are countless articles that report students cheating on examinations, plagiarizing written assignments, and collaborating with others when such behavior is prohibited. 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