Health Promotion and Clinical Prevention

HEALTH PROMOTION AND CLINICAL PREVENTION
Author’s Name
Institute Affiliation
Health Promotion and Clinical Prevention
The state and local health departments have a complex yet fundamental role to play in ensuring that they promote health services and in so doing they achieve the important public healthcare 2020 promotion goals. In a nutshell, the local health department is considered to be the lowest yet an important unit of public health administration. Their main role is in ensuring that they use the best scientific innovation to formulate public health policies (Koh, 2010). These policies assure the public of basic health provision services at any given time. Thus, they can be free of any diseases and have optimal well-being. Furthermore, since they are always in contact on a daily basis with the public, the local health departments are well situated to get firsthand information related to the basic health needs of the community. Nevertheless, they are mandated to train and educate the workers on current and new ways of doing things and better ways of approaching public health issues (Koh, 2010). Thus, this role of training provides a more significant for the local health department in meeting its objectives of ensuring the local people’s health is safeguarded. On the other hand, nurses in the public health departments will also play critical roles in helping the people to change their habits at both primary and secondary level. For instance, at the primary level, a nurse can take the role of educators hence offering important information to their clients.

For example, they can discourage teenagers from eating junk food and encourage them to be exercising more. On the other hand, they also have an important role in secondary prevention. Once a client has been diagnosed with an illness, the nurses can work with them and help them to manage other controllable risks (Watt, 2005). Their involvement helps the client in modifying their lifestyles which can drastically diminish the illness development.
Reference
Koh, H. K. (2010). A 2020 vision for healthy people. New England Journal of Medicine, 362(18), 1653-1656.
Watt, R. G. (2005). Strategies and approaches in oral disease prevention and health promotion. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 83, 711-718.