Health Priority Issues

Part 1

There are three main priority issues for improving Australia’s health;

Groups experiencing health inequities

High levels of preventable chronic disease, injury and mental health problems

A growing and aging population

Groups experiencing health inequities

In Australia there are many different groups experiencing health inequities. In order to help these groups extra funding and resources is required to hopefully make health outcomes for the affected groups as good as the rest of the Australian population. Groups experiencing health inequities include ATSI, the elderly, people born overseas, people living in rural and remote areas, people with low socioeconomic status, and those with disabilities.

High levels of preventable chronic

To identify health priorities there is a variety of things that need to be taken into consideration which include the principles of social justice, cost on individuals and the community, level of burden of disease and potential for prevention and early intervention that will reduce the issues prevalence and incidence.

The principles of social justice are the foundation of identifying health priorities in Australia, this essentially means providing equitable distribution of resources so that all Australians can reach the same level of health. Various groups are considered when identifying priority issues and when a group is decided to be disadvantaged the government will provide greater resources for them such as the ATSI population to reach better health outcomes. Prevalence is an obvious thing to be considered, there is no point making a condition a priority health issue if it only affects a very small percentage of people. If there is any chance of early intervention and/or prevention through changes in lifestyle, health promotion is likely to be enforced. The higher the cost to the individual and the community, the higher chance of it becoming a health priority because it has a large burden on people's lives. The most important thing taken into account by our government when deciding whether something will become a health priority is the cost of the treatment, if it is too expensive the government will not make it a health

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