Question

1. How is community health programming moving away from just focusing on individual health behavior, and moving toward focusing on the behaviors of groups, communities, and populations? Give at least one specific example.

Answer 1

Community health programs have historically been associated with the focus on individual health behavior but in recent times the focus has shifted to accommodate larger areas of studies which includes the groups, communities, and populations

Individual health behavior: The individual health behavior are the areas of programs which involves the study of factors that are focused narrowly on individual affected and their behaviors. SOme of the examples of individual health behavior are programs on substance abuse, smoking, physical activity, diet studies, etc.

Community health programs: The community health programs have a wider scope and use multiple intervention strategies to focus on target groups, communities, and populations. As a result they programss have a large impact on policy formulation and environmental change assessment.

The example for community health programming moving away from individual health behavior to focusing on the behaviors of groups, communities, and populations would be the study of water borne disease prevalence int he community. In this program the focus was not restricted to detection and prevention of people in the area due to contaminated water but the focus was much larger as it employed the community health programming objectives. here. In this community health programming the focus was on:

1. Individuals affected by waterborne diseases

2. Community affected

3. Water pollution and waster management

4. Ecological impact of contaminated water

5. Environmental aspects and concerns

So, by this example we can see that by consulting community health programming we can get a 360 degree view of a health program and operate on a wider level to help groups, communities, and populations.