CH 2 Annotations

In chapter two, Berridge explains some of the challenges within the field of public health. Specifically, she spends the chapter looking at the issues faced at the local and national levels in the United Kingdom. In 2014, a survey was completed in order to see some of the issues that public health officials thought should be priority. Some of the issues that they thought were important are pricing of alcohol, tobacco packaging, reducing the amount of personal transport, minimum wage, minimum physical activity, cutting sugar in foods, stopping the marketing of high fat and sugar foods to children, installing health education into the school system. These are issues that are not only a priority in the UK, but also throughout the globe.

One of the biggest topics in public health is the topic of behavior modification. She explains that this is what public health officials do in order to nudge people into healthier habits. Berridge says that smoking is one of the best examples of behavior modification. The biggest issue with smoking was to denormalize it. The first big step was to pass the legislation of no smoking zones. Another way of denormalizing it was to create plain packaging.

Berridge also goes over the tactics that public health officials use in order to create healthier lives. The easiest and largest example of this is vaccinations. Nearly all children in the UK are immunized against tetanus, diphtheria, whooping cough, meningitis, MMR, and most other infectious diseases. Along with this, vaccinations have started to be used for cervical cancer since 2008 in teenage girls, and since its beginning has become routine.

Another tactic used by public health officials is the screenings of the population. Screenings came into the field when tuberculosis was widespread. The United Kingdom started using screenings in 1948. The screenings would take place in either a hospital setting or in a general surgeon’s office.

In the UK, the Health and Social Care Act reorganized the health systems, and gave local authorities health related duties to achieve. This act also mandated that they appoint a local director of public health. This move began the shift from the health services region where public health had been, into the field of politics. A move that brought public health back around to its roots.

One of these biggest issues in the field of public health right now, and over the history of the fields, is looking at the health inequalities that lower socioeconomic status people face. It is much more difficult to achieve and maintain a high health status if one is in the lower socioeconomic status. In London, the closure you lived to their train system, the lower your general life expectancy. Through the use of figures, maps, and graphs it was very easy to see the difference in life expectancies throughout the different socioeconomic statuses.