Discuss How would your choice affect public health and how we track disease
Part 1: 100 words give an opinion of each reading with reference
Disease entities should be listed as official causes of death
How would your choice affect public health and how we track disease?
Hello class, as I went over this week’s lesson there were many different things to learn about in public health and the understanding of why public health is needed throughout the world is very important. We live in a world with many different diseases and many different causes of deaths whether it be diseases, illnesses, or accidents but it is vital to know what causes it and how in the future to prevent it and what steps to take so it may not happen to others. Those who work with Public Health helps keep the health of the population by monitoring, regulating, and promoting the great significance of health in general.
I chose to speak on topic one and I think it is extremely important that disease entities be listed as the official causes of death. According to Hucklenbroich (2014) it is the concept of disease entity that is the key importance for understanding medical pathology and theory of disease. Disease entity is placed in a category where it offers the explanation of the individual cases of being ill and for the practical purpose of the diagnosis. The word ‘disease’ is designated for the whole course of the individual case from the beginning or the first cause to its outcome in contrast to single manifestations, symptoms, or findings in the case (Hucklenbroich, 2014). When using ‘disease entity’ it helps designate the type or pattern to which the disease belongs. It is believed that the system of disease entities fulfills two principles which are the Principle of completeness and Principle of unambiguousness (Hucklenbroich, 2014).
Reference
Hucklenbroich, P. (2014, December). Disease entity as the key theoretical concept of medicine. The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy: A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine, Volume 39, Issue 6, 1, Pages 609–633, https://doi.org/10.1093/jmp/jhu040
Hartlaub, P., Swain, G.R., Ward, G. K. (2005, February). Death certificates: let’s get it right. Am Fam Physician. 71(4): 652, 655-656. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15742904?dopt=Abstract
Part 2 100 words given an opinion of the reading with reference
To continue to track trends in death rates, underlying causes of disease entities should be listed on death certificates because there can be underlying causes for example lung cancer if the person smoked tobacco, but not all forms of lung cancer are caused by smoking so there should be an unknown or if known the reason could be included.
For public health tracking and programming for prevention and understanding if current methods are working are a valid reason for putting this information on death certificates. It is understandable that the appearance of this information on the death certificate could appear that people are blamed but the reality is the information would be used to further the overall health of the population.
There is discussion around documenting neurodegenerative diseases on death certificates as primary reasons of death due to the multilayers of neurodegenerative diseases that makes listing
the cause of death difficult (Marian, 2017). Most of the death certificates reviewed did not mention the neurodegenerative disease, death was typically acute (Marian, 2017). Further discussion was around how diseases that brought people to hospitals were complicated by sepsis and this may or may not be reflected on death certificates (Govindan, 2014). It is the belief of researchers that record keeping is the same worldwide and needs to be improved.
Lisa
References
Govindan, S. (2014). Death Certificates Underestimate Infections as proximal causes of death in
the U.S. . PLoS ONE, 1-4.
Marian, M. (2017). Death certificate data and causes of death in patients with parkinsonism.
Parkinsonism & Related Disorders, 99-103.
