Ethical Health

The main objective of ethical health promotion is to find the ultimate goal for the public health practices for example, the ‘good’ that can be achieved by consequently achieving the ultimate goal. Most of the projects that are initiated by public health authorities are aimed to change the lifestyle and behavior of people to better their health and the healthcare services they access in general. Ethical health promotion is considered as the “Aspect of public health practice that is particularly concerned with the equity of social arrangements and the fact that those arrangements can be altered to make things better for everyone.” A case example of some of the promotions that have been put in place includes putting policies like the requirement to wear crash helmets and seatbelts and highly taxing alcohol. However, the results of these changes are not as always expected, some have partly succeeded while some have completely failed.

Health promotion covers a wide range of interventions from the provision of information via education, the introduction of new ‘normal’, and even the modification of the already existing norms (Guttman 2017). Due to the reasons that health promotion involves some changes that are critically potential to the changes in people’s lifestyles, it raises questions about health promotion values. Some of the questions raised include; whether it is immoral for individuals to indulge in polygamous unions that could result in stigmatization and discrimination of such individuals. I think that healthcare professionals have more roles to play than those which they are currently doing. To gain more understanding and information on how healthcare professionals handle their ethical issues, one has to review the ethical challenges they face and come up with the most suitable strategies to try and counter those particular challenges.

Using their prudential judgment while handling ethical issues might just be the efficient way to employ to address the ethical issues. Prudential judgment involves some issues including using discretion to filter between what is good and bad for the population following their cultural or religious practices. It would be unfair to a particular population if a certain policy was implemented as a result of ethical health promotion and that same policy is against the cultural or religious practice of that population. It then falls upon the healthcare professionals to assess the population before making any implementation to come up with a ‘good’ that will be of benefit to all the people. It is also important to note that healthcare professionals have a responsibility that is ethical and legal to protect the patients that they serve (Porter 2016). The healthcare professionals have the responsibility to deliver appropriate healthcare to their patients without neglecting some. Surveys have shown that nursing facilities have recorded more cases of older patients being neglected. Neglect of patients, whether intentionally or unintentionally may result in a high penalty for the responsible professional.

Some of the ethical theories relevant to the promotion of ethical health through the changing of behavior include natural law, paternalism, and distributive justice. The theories stated have been initially reviewed concerning their specific relation to changing the unhealthy behaviors of people. In summary, the roles of the healthcare professionals in behavioral change have also been examined and therefore, recommended that healthcare professionals may be required to limit the conditions that they impose on the population.

REFERENCE

Guttman, N. (2017). Ethical issues in health promotion and communication interventions. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication.

Porter, C. M. (2016). Revisiting Precede–Proceed A leading model for ecological and ethical health promotion. Health Education Journal, 75(6), 753-764.