The Affordable Care Act was enacted by the former Pres. Obama in hopes to provide the American people affordable health care and improve their health (Harkness & DeMarco, 2016). That said, we have to consider the population affected when developing healthcare policies. We have to consider the diversity of the population, such as cultural background, race, and means of living. Is there an influx of immigrants in the community? Immigrants have different healthcare needs than their nonimmigrant counterparts. We also have to consider whether the community is underserved or not. Healthcare policies will be different in addressing the underserved communities. The local community where we live has different health concerns that should be addressed when making health care policies. …show more content…
Smoking does not only affect the individual smoker, but also those around them. Second hand smoking can be devastating especially to the young children. We have to protect the health of the children because they are our future. Preventative health care should also be addressed to keep the community healthy. We have to develop policies that give funding to make preventative healthcare more accessible to everyone. We also have to address drug addiction problem in the community because deaths related to drug overdose are on the rise. Rudd, Seth, David, and Scholl (2016) stated that “the drug overdose death rate increased significantly from 12.3 per 100,000 population in 2010 to 16.3 in 2015” (p. 1445). Drug and/or opioid addiction problem affects everyone in the community, especially the children. Thus, health policies that address this issue is