5 Ways To Improve Community Health And Safety

It’s a common misconception that your health is only affected by what you eat and how often you exercise. However, implementing a lifestyle that could promote physical, mental, and emotional well-being goes well beyond these two objectives. For instance, your environment, access to clean and safe drinking water, and a like-minded group of people also play a significant role in improving the health of a community.

Improving public health and safety within communities is crucial for reducing the number of chronic illnesses and taking timely actions in case of a medical emergency. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has brought forth a special emphasis for communities to be prepared and plan for unprecedented circumstances.

Several factors impact the health and well-being of a community. An unhealthy population can reduce the overall quality of life and severely strain its resources. But working for betterment is a joint effort and not a one-person job. Therefore, it’s the duty of every individual, organization, and public official to respond to its people’s needs and do what’s necessary to protect the public.

Although most people understand that community health should be a top priority, most may find it challenging to figure out ways to improve it. To help you, we have listed tried-and-tested strategies to better your communities’ health and safety effectively.

1. Understand how complex adaptive systems work better together

The first step toward improving community health is understanding how various organizational structures are involved in solving and identifying public health concerns. By emphasizing systems thinking in healthcare disciplines, you can converge multiple fields simultaneously and find answers to a leading problem.

For example, there must be a system for conducting global surveillance and detecting new cases as they arise during an influenza outbreak. Secondly, there must be a laboratory setup to identify novel strains and design targeted therapeutics to contain the disease. Additionally, a unit that can communicate and develop relevant strategies for addressing the community and implementing suitable safety measures must also be present.

While each entity is necessary, it’s insufficient to control an outbreak. However, holistically, the entire system can prove beneficial for millions of lives—as long as you understand how to use it well.

2. Ensure safe and healthy living conditions

A safe and healthy environment isn’t a privilege but a fundamental human right. Regardless of age, gender, race, or socioeconomic status, everyone has a right to live in clean and secure conditions, away from unnecessary risks and dangers.

Unfortunately, billions of people globally, especially in developing countries, don’t have access to the proper resources. When living conditions are unsatisfactory, people are more prone and susceptible to getting infected or developing chronic illnesses. Pollution, poor sanitation, and improper housing can all contribute to ill-health in communities. In fact, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), 9 out of 10 people worldwide live in places where air quality exceeds its standard guideline limits.

To reduce the risk of diseases in your community, work with your local officials to improve the living conditions of the people. Some ways to do this are by:

• installing filter plants to ease access to clean and safe drinking water
• facilitating coordination between public housing and social services so more people can live in homes
• creating job opportunities to improve their quality of life
• educating the public regarding basic hygiene practices and their importance

3. Promote physical activity

Because of the escalating use of automobiles, an aging population, and unplanned urbanization, physical inactivity is quickly becoming a leading public health concern. This trend is prevailing in low- and middle-income communities and is highly problematic because of its impact on community health.

Research shows immobility can put individuals at a greater risk for chronic diseases like cancer, diabetes, and obesity and decreases life expectancy. Moreover, the WHO has also named it the fourth leading risk factor for global mortality. These facts highlight the importance of physical activity and its urgent need in the community. When people become active, a lower percentage of the population is at risk of getting ill, decreasing the burden on healthcare and other systems.

You can encourage physical activity in the community by implementing strategies like:

• designing activity-friendly routes
• making exercise opportunities accessible
• installing community playgrounds
• promoting sports leagues and athletic competitions

4. Encourage healthy eating

Food and dietary habits have the most prominent link with the leading causes of death in the United States. Studies show that heart diseases, diabetes, and some types of cancer affect prognosis based on a patient’s eating routine. Since everyone’s obsessed with getting things done fast, most people want to eat meals on the go or ones that require minimum effort. Therefore, processed or frozen food companies and fast-food chains have grown significantly in just the past few decades.

Luckily, this is a solvable problem. You can encourage healthy eating in your community by promoting health campaigns in schools or restructuring certain businesses like grocery stores. For example, school meal programs can provide children from low-income backgrounds with healthy and nutritious foods that can help them sustain their strength. You can also encourage your corner store to keep fresh fruits and vegetables to encourage more people to eat organic and well-balanced meals.

5. Increases access to quality healthcare and services

One of the biggest obstacles some people must face is the variety of access barriers to receiving quality healthcare. In an ideal world, residents of a community should be able to conveniently enlist the services of primary care, emergency care, dental care, or behavioral health. However, whether it’s due to lack of medical insurance, health illiteracy, stigma, or poor infrastructure, inequality in access exists even today. Despite all the advancements and improvements in medicine in the past few decades, many people are still getting sick simply because they cannot utilize the relevant resources.

If you can enhance the number of people having access to standard-of-care services, you can bring down the percentage of health concerns by a significant proportion. Although this is a crucial step in improving community health, it might also be the most challenging. Solicit the help of government officials, hospital management, and community leaders to strategize ways of crossing these hurdles and making healthcare accessible for all.

Conclusion

Identify the needs of your population and implement strategies that can best cater to their problems. The health and safety improvement program may differ for every community, depending on its particular circumstances, health concerns, resources, and capacities.

You must recognize this process as an ongoing one that must evolve based on emerging problems and understandings instead of posing only a one-stop solution.