Social and behavioral aspects of public health

The term Public Health meant the awareness and understanding of the public on a wider platform along with the prevalence and incidence rate of the varied diseases, total population and a geographical viewpoint of the varied ratio and percentages worldwide. Registering for a Masters in Public Health as a Psychologist was solely based on the concept of understanding individual and their behavior in society on a wider domain.

The introductory course taught me that there is much more to the field of Public Health. It is not merely just the above. Public Health is a proactive and a preventive approach focusing on the entire population than on just one individual suffering from a disease. Public health is productive when the entire population is healthy and when it fails or falters the entire population suffers along with it. The social and behavioral aspect of Public health takes into consideration the social concepts and processes that influence the health status that is the culture, race/ethnicity, gender, poverty/disparities, factors related to behavior change, community, organizational climate, family and public health interventions and to develop empathy towards the needs, attitude and behavior of the society/community as well as to further study the vast aspects of the social and behavioral determinants of health.

As health care is a labor intensive industry, the Human Resource Department verifies that all its employees have legitimate credentials/experiences to ensure the qualified personnel are selected. However, our Department is not limited to just selection and hiring of the right candidate when it comes to Public Health. We also ensure the safeguard and security of its employees. Healthy diet plans have not only been implemented for the patients but for the staff as well. Employees are required to receive their vaccination shots from the Centre. Regular BMI’s, medical fitness tests, dental checkups are conducted to ensure our employees are healthy and on the right path of life.

Field duties and regular medical camps are conducted for all our disciplines on a monthly basis. Awareness sessions are held in our training department for our employees. Awareness sessions are also conducted at schools and at our urban and rural communities.

As an HR Supervisor, I was part of a project which required me to travel for a two day medical camp in Chachro, Tharparkar, District of Sindh, Pakistan. The two villages where the medical camp was conducted were Kamharhar Pali Paro and Falooji Dani. The social and behavioral aspects of visiting these two villages provided an insight into the way their lives their life, the customs and cultures they follow as a family and a community which I would discuss in the following two chapters.