Advocacy
In recent years, health advocacy has become a massive strategy to provide affordable care to vulnerable populations. Advocacy usually means access to assistance and multifaceted explanations to the patient of the significance and meaning of many procedures (Dukhanin et al., 2018). Advocate nurses inform patients before admission and raise their level of awareness of the discovered disease. Citizens with conditions associated with social stigma and people with incurable or exotic infections may especially need advocacy.
In addition, advocacy helps patients who are victims of immoral or violent behavior. Minority victims of police brutality, as well as victims of domestic violence, can receive all the support and assistance that is adequate for their condition. Sexual violence is a widely discussed topic in society and, at the same time, a stigmatizing event for the victim, which requires nurses and doctors to advocate. Often, patients’ health only worsens without a proper awareness of their unique condition (Dukhanin et al., 2018). Patients who have used the advocacy functions of the medical staff receive protection and complete information about their disease and possible medical and social consequences.
Health Policy
Health policy is an official tool for regulating the provision of assistance to different population segments. Health policy can broadly be defined as any official policy to improve health care (Dukhanin et al., 2018). Then it can concern both patients and medical staff, as well as regulate the receipt of medical education by students. An example would be the impact of COVID-19 on changes in student learning about public health. A health policy is any decision or goal that must be clearly articulated in speech and fundamentally achievable. Often, health policies are indirectly related to politics, culture, and economics, as they hold together different spheres of society with the help of legal operations. At the same time, health policy considers any healthcare organization as part of a global health institution, along with an institution of police or law.
Health policies are the guarantors of receiving assistance to vulnerable segments of the population and the correctness of providing aid to those who can receive it in the right amount. Health policies protect medical staff from the unlawful attitude of patients towards them, as well as from the injustice of the authorities. Such policies can sometimes regulate the labor code and the processing of nurses, which the public has been talking about, especially actively with the advent of COVID-19.
Social Justice
Social justice means providing medical care of the required nature to all citizens, regardless of their origin, race, economic status, and other social, cultural, and other characteristics (Dukhanin et al., 2018). The aspect of social justice is strongly linked to medical ethics and the doctor-patient relationship. For instance, social justice as a problem is reflected in the ethical dilemma of helping dangerous criminals. The moral code of nurses in recent years is strongly associated with the cultural characteristics of patients, as the medical field seeks to eradicate discrimination on this basis. Nurses and doctors must not ignore patients’ cultural and other features, pretending to provide equal rights, services, and attitudes. The medical staff must pay due attention to this without invading privacy.
For example, when treating patients who require the organization of a strict diet, it must be remembered that some of them are Jews and Muslims. They are people whose diet, in addition to medical indications, is regulated by religious prescriptions. In such situations, the medical staff should make inquiries on their own, talk politely with the patient or, in the absence of this opportunity, ask for the attention of the patient’s relatives. However, health equity issues may not only apply to cultural minorities or the marginalized in terms of income. For a long time, scientists have recorded discrimination against people with various diseases, for example, mental ones or obesity, and the inattentive attitude of medical staff towards them.
COVID-19 Example
COVID-19 has exposed issues of institutional and structural racism, forcing people of color to seek help and suffer without basic cures. COVID-19 has hit the low-income community and households hard, causing some people to consider relocating to a temporary holding facility due to the inability to pay for housing. Job loss and a prolonged lockdown have forced many people to be on the streets while violating the fundamental principles of isolation and safety (Chavez, 2021). In this regard, California COVID Justice Committee created an initiative to officially pay rent for low-income families who fight structural racism.
Providing low-income families with special household benefits allowed them to follow the principles of isolation and not live in poverty. The government has decided to take responsibility for the direct housing payment to reduce the likelihood of such people falling into police custody. The time spent in police detention centers is usually minimal, and the police are forced to provide citizens only with overexposure conditions. After overexposure, many came into the streets, as the lockdown conditions did not allow them to find even the lowest-paid job in the shortest possible time to pay for part of the apartment. Specialists state: “People experiencing homelessness can lose what little property they have when the police force people to quickly abandon encampments” (Chavez, 2021). The lockdown forced people to be immobilized, but the racial minorities, constantly active in search of conveniences and a better life, could not afford it.
References
Chavez, L. (2021). Seeking COVID justice through policy change. California Health Care Foundation. Web.
Dukhanin, V., Searle, A., Zwerling, A., Dowdy, D. W., Taylor, H. A., & Merritt, M. W. (2018, February). Integrating social justice concerns into economic evaluation for healthcare and public health: A systematic review. Social Science &Amp; Medicine, 198, 27–35.