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APHA: AMERICAN PUBLIC HEALTH ASSOCIATION THE ORGANIZATION FOR

LEADING CHANGE

MODUPE O SARRATT

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND UNIVERSITY COLLEGE

HCAD 630 SECTION 9040

Assignment #4: Major Research Paper

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Abstract

Public health is not easy to define but American Public Health Association is the organization for

the development of public health systems today and in the future for organizing local health

agencies in the counties for health department across the United States to serve the communities

with providing health services to all Americans. APHA provides health intervention, published

health journal, and newspaper; creating annual meetings to discuss health issues and explanation

for getting ready to campaign, and prepare for disasters and hazards that include disease outbreak

for pandemic flu, endemic infectious, and transitional for epidemic intelligence to investigate

diseases for transformation to medical intelligence to treat diseases. APHA for Affordable Care

Act, oversee discretionary public health spending of most public health agencies and programs

nationwide, including Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Health Resources and

Services Administration, provide cost saving for chronic disease prevention and return on

investment for providing treatment for chronic diseases, APHA supports the Clean Air Act,

Climate Change, and Emergency Preparedness for all disaster. Although public health has an

implementing intervention for preventing diseases to treating diseases with supply teaching

materials and publishing public health journals, there is the challenge to get the people to sign up

for the publication to learn about health. Example of behavior and action toward a disease is

Tuberculosis and Human Immunodeficiency Virus, these two diseases, require harmonious of

tough policy and tough actions of the public health leaders to change people behaviors in order to

be successful with treatment to prevent the disease is the mission to include medical care for the

poor with the Institute of Medicine in the future of public health services.

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APHA THE ORGANIZATION FOR LEADING CHANGE

What is public health?

Public health is not easy to define but American Public Health Association (APHA) is the

organization for the development of public health systems today and in the future for organizing

local health agencies in the counties for health department across the United States to serve the

communities with providing health services to all Americans. According to the organization

website, “public health promotes and protects the health of people and the communities where

they live, learn, work and play” (APHA, 2016).

WHAT APHA DOES & DOESN’T

What APHA does

APHA provides health intervention, published health journal, and newspaper; creating

annual meetings to discuss health issues and explanation for getting ready to campaign, and

prepare for disasters and hazards that include disease outbreak for pandemic flu, endemic

infectious, and transitional for epidemic intelligence to investigate diseases for transformation to

medical intelligence to treat disease. These are the facts about what the organization does:

APHA for Affordable Care Act, oversee discretionary public health spending of most

public health agencies and programs nationwide, including Centers for Disease Control

and Prevention (CDC) and the Health Resources s and Services Administration (HRSA)

to provide the cost saving for chronic disease prevention and return on investment for

providing treatment for chronic disease, APHA supports the Clean Air Act, Climate

Change, and Emergency Preparedness for all disaster (APHA 2016, factsheet).

The organization achievement is based on good communication skills to bring together other

health care expertise and other agencies for coordinating health services.

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APHA health professionals rely on research strategies to understand issues for clinical

setting such as infant mortality and chronic disease in particular population to include

professionals from many fields into the practice of protecting the health of the population. Public

health workers are from a diverse background with one agenda to improve health all over the

world.

APHA had some success with strengthening the public health professionals to provide a

science-based to influence policy and to debates health for conviction, emotion, ideas and

financial welfare of all the people to defeat disease and poverty for achieving equity.

APHA maintains the vision to advance to providing global health around the world for

transformational to be the number one in the world for health with administering the vaccination

to prevent diseases is an ongoing success despite the setbacks for change of policy.

What APHA doesn’t do

APHA is not American Medical Association (AMA) for not practicing medicine for not

offering prescribing medication to treat diseases. APHA is an organization of health professional

for preventative measures to defeat and eradicate diseases as one of the areas in which public

health may never be able to achieve for friction with the medical institution to use medicine for

destroying disease . Also, the Institute of Public Health for preventing disease is not the same for

the Institute of Medicine for researching the effect of the medicine (drug) or medication used to

prevent or treat disease.

APHA SUCCESSFUL TRANSITION & UNSUCCESSFUL TRANSITION

Successful transition

APHA has been successful in preventing the childhood infectious diseases by vaccination

to advance with stopping the spreading of a contagious disease such as tuberculosis (TB) and

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eradicating diseases such as smallpox. Successful with implementing the policy for preventing

the spreading of disease, improving services delivering for treating diseases with the corporation

of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Success with providing effective

training for management of chronic diseases. According to Schneider, (2011), APHA has a great

success in controlling infectious diseases and common childhood diseases in the United States.

In 2007, CDC reported that APHA measures prevent transmission of disease-causing bacteria,

virus, and parasite by interrupting the chain of infection, eliminating the reservoir that harbors

pathogen and preventing the transmission from one host to another (p.147).

Although public health has an implementing intervention for preventing diseases to

treating disease with supply teaching materials and publishing public health journals, there is the

challenge to get the people to sign up for the publication to learn about health. APHA has helped

with saving money to improve the quality of life with health program such WIC to help the

women and children to thrive for having adequate nutrition by reducing poverty. Despite the

great achievement, infectious disease is still one of the major areas that need improvement to

defeat diseases.

Unsuccessful transition

With all the success, APHA has not been successful in creating a behavior for a healthy

lifestyle or remove disparity especially lack of success with proactive for adolescent health

which is the factor in the resurgence of childhood diseases in high school and among college

students. Although some of the reason is associated with people’s fear of vaccines and the

pharmaceutical reluctant to invest in developing vaccines to be sufficient for immunization, “lack

of vaccine is reported in 131 cases for the measles outbreak in the United States in 2008 for

leaving the children unvaccinated” (Schneider, 2011, p146). However, the greatest challenge is

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the parents’ refusal of vaccines for their children on the basis of a rumor that some vaccines harm

some children to opt out from immunizing the children to claim a religion or a belief.

Such as, a “Muslim leader in Nigeria believe that vaccine for polio causes infertility”

spread in the United States that “measles vaccine causes child autism” and because of the parent

fear for autism is widespread in the United States, the Institute of Medicine conducted periodic

review of vaccines safety is a hold back to the Institute of Public health to be able to prevent

childhood diseases by immunization.

In 2003, the Institute of Medicine published a review for sudden infant death syndrome

(SID) is connected to some vaccines such as pertussis, a vaccine to prevent whooping coughs

may be the cause for SID was rejected for insufficient evidence. Also, in 2004, the Institute of

Medicine implies there is a link that measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine is possible to cause

autism is also rejected for which among the three agents of MMR is responsible to causes autism

is rejected for “causal relationship between MMR vaccine and autism” is poorly understood for

more research. (Immunization safety, 2003), a good news for APHA, but there are some evident

that vaccine retain some risk such as fever and seizures in some infants vaccinated for pertussis

and by oral polio vaccine that contains a live weakened virus. Although the risk is lesser to the

unvaccinated children for developing fatal diseases.

In addition to the good news is the study that indicates MMR does not cause autism.

According to Madison et al (2002) for a population-based study done in Denmark in which one

in five children had not received MMR vaccine, the researchers found that the children that were

analyzed for parental factor for parentage is the cause for developing autism because the same

rate for autism in the children who receive vaccine with the same factor parentage show autism

to be genetically related to the parental age at the birth of a child is the cause of autism.

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However, measles, a virus that once theorized to be the among of diseases eradicated in

the United State by the APHA is one of the lessons of failure when the public health relaxes from

their position or when the public health encounter hindrance to prevent disease. When measles a

childhood preventable disease becomes a disease outbreaks among the high school and college

students who had been vaccinated as babies’ shows that some viruses are unpredictable to reset

for booster vaccines. The greater problem that hinders public health success is that too many

children were not being immunized for lack of vaccines, and parental failure to get their children

vaccinated create a challenge for a tough leadership and a tough policy to design the significant

of intervention that is appropriate to address a current situation about a disease.

THE LEADER BEHAVIORS & ACTIONS

The leaders’ behavior is fantastic for emphasizing prevention using mass media to change

behavior as an attempt to eradicate the disease and influencing policies that promote health and

welfare of individual and the community. Although to eradicate a disease that is ineradicable for

contagiousness can be challenging or backfire if an action and behavior toward a disease are

compromised for a policy, or a belief for contentious if the action is not significant enough to be

effective to eradicate a disease to leave a disease residue that may have the potential to become

stronger for drug resistant is the loss for not able to defeat a disease that can become a plague in

some communities or countries. Example of behavior and action toward a disease is Tuberculosis

(TB) and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), these two diseases, require harmonious of

tough policy and tough actions of the public health leaders to change people behaviors in order to

be successful with treatment to prevent the disease is the mission to include medical care for the

poor with the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in the future of public health services.

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Currently, the public health leader actions have enabled the reinforcement of school

vaccinations policy as mandatory in the United State regardless of belief have impacted the

parent to get their children immunize before attending school. However, there is still the shortage

of vaccines that some children were left out to be infected with the contagious disease, and as a

result spreading the disease for the complexity of the public health to control childhood diseases.

So what are the behavior of the public health leader to impact change for eliminating diseases?

THE IMPACT OF CHANGE

Can behavior be change, is the reason for saying, try to change self and see how easy that

will be. That is why a leader behavior is an action for a convincing statement to influence policy

and the people why a change is necessary. A leader that will turn personal issues into public

health issues to advocate for the policies of the economy that will improve health conditions to

influence the government to make the adjustment requires a thorough understanding of the

effects of a disease to an individual and the impact of a disease in the community. Requires a

leader that will make a tough decision to demand the policy to eradicate any contagious

infectious diseases wherever it may occur.

Lessons have been learned from a current understanding of TB as one of the diseases that

cannot be eradicated for drug resistant and for coinciding with another disease. According to

CDC, “People living with HIV are likely than others to become sick with tuberculosis (TB)”.

The TB is the growing global threat of TBHIV epidemic according to Corbett et al (2003), “the

HIV pandemic presents a massive challenge to global TB control for reactivating latent

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) infection that will increases the risk of rapid TB progression

for reinfection” to reinforce the constant actions of the public health to control disease is

campaigning to bring dramatic result to defeat resurgence of the disease to prevent the calamity

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of a disease in the United States and around the world. Because the disease thought to be

eliminated from the United State are reemerging for climate change, people attitude toward

disease and from international travel. These are the challenges for the type of leadership, type of

policy, and the type of actions for APHA to defeat diseases.

World Health Organization set a goal of eradicating polio by the year 2000 according to

Aylward et al (2000) for lessons learned about polio “this goal is not met for reporting the

endemic of poliomyelitis outside of United Stated in these countries, Nigeria, India, Pakistan,

and Afghanistan, although a substantial progress has been made to eliminated polio from

Western Hemisphere, Europe, and Western Pacific” but there is still substantial evidence that

polio risen that can still an impact in the USA for a polio disease to indicate that public health is

a broad field of diversity of diseases as result of travel.

THE DEGREE OF APHA OPERATION

The APHA is the oldest and most diverse organization of the public health professional in

the world and has been working to improve public health since 1872. The organization aims to

protect all Americans, their families, and their communities from preventable serious health

threats and to strive to provide community-based health promotion and disease prevention

activities and preventive health services. The degree of APHA operation is their policy statement

to be the organization that helps shape the legislation and regulation affecting the health of

individual and the community to write briefs and statement on many public health issues. APHA

is award winning for publishing health journals and health books for more than 100 years. APHA

builds a collective voice that highlights the need for research on a specific health topic to ensure

access to quality care that includes medical science, protect funding for the provision of health

service. APHA is the voice of the people that impact change for healthy living and healthy

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environment. APHA is the public health for preventing childhood disease with vaccinating the

children and preventing an adult from getting sick to stop the spreading of disease. Their work is

to ensure the changing for ultimate health that means ensuring conditions where everyone has the

opportunity to be healthy. APHA partners with many organization for public health issues.

CURRENT ISSUES FACING APHA

The current issues for APHA are the inaccuracy of information and unavailability of data

for inequities barrier of health information, to collect accurate data for birth and death and

procedures errors that are incomplete and subject to bias for evaluating changes to make an

improvement that can bring about the equity that supports public health infrastructure. Other

issues include how to promote the healthy behaviors for chronic disease, climate change, the

resurgence of the communicable disease to change the social unhealthy behaviors and stressful

life events for smoking and drinking to implement a policy for healthy behaviors that will

prevent diseases. While APHA does not have much power to change the people’s attitude toward

gun violence, the organization has taken the initiative to help change policy for safe gun by

campaign to reform gun law for health reform to stop disease associated with violence and

assault to build violence-free communities in “Tell Congress to pass commonsense measures to

reduce gun violence” because gun violence is the current leading cause of premature death in the

United States” as reminder of work that needs to be done (APHA, 2016, campaign)

Other issues include public health surveillance that will enable to track and monitor

behaviors and actions of assaults for diseases. Public health surveillance according to Nsubuga et

al, (2006) is the “continuous, systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of health-related

data needed for the planning, implementation, and evaluation of practice.” The degree in which

APHA health surveillance is used for targeting and monitoring to prevent diseases for medical

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intelligence is yet unknown for the framework in which the “public health officials rely on

medical providers, laboratories, and other public health personnel to report the occurrence of

notifiable diseases to state and local health departments. Without such data, monitoring trends or

evaluating the effectiveness of intervention activities would be difficult” in a case cited for

public health surveillance (Wharton et al 1990).

How APHA will fulfill the theme for “creating the healthiest nation by ensuring the right

to health" greatly depend on the types of leadership ability to influence change for better

performance. Poor performance is noted by CDC to be approximately 10% of public health less

understood of disease condition to measures and track disease for prevention is the reason for

reoccurrence of the preventable disease. To fulfil the theme healthiest nation for preventing

diseases will require a framework for collaborative with institute of medicine into the public

health practice according to Erwin & Brownson (2017), “The Institute of Medicine’s (IOM)

report the future of Public Health in the 21st century offered a framework for collaborative public

health action in communities (p.446). Image to show the framework in which the APHA can

achieve the goal of creating healthiest communities around the world.

HOW APHA PROPOSE TO MEET ITS FUTURE GOALS

APHA proposed to meet the goal of healthiest nation by value the inputs from their members,

allies, communities, municipal and private citizens equally to help develop strategic framework

to focus public health agencies priorities for initiating changing and improving the organizations

by focus on the most important problems such as:

assessing care, improving how health services are delivered, addressing behavior for

health issues, providing resource for supportive measure to strengthening management

for information to provide training for educating the people to make improvement that

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supports the infrastructure of public health to bring about equity for raising the physical,

mental, social, and spiritual health of all Americans (APHA, 2016)

POWER AND RESPONSIBILITY OF APHA

Schneider (2011) agrees that APHA power is the community effort for health services for

governmental responsibility, although a successful public health must involve all sectors

including nongovernmental organization for preventing and treating diseases, the states have the

primary legal responsibility for public health to provide services to the communities. And despite

the lack of constitutional authority, the federal government has established a significant role in

funding public health to enforce laws and regulations on issues related to health, locally and

nationally. The federal government assistant has enabled the public health with providing health

services all over the United States (p43).

CHART TO ILLUSTRATE STEPS FOR MOVING FORWARD

(CDC. 2016)

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References

American Public Health Association. (2016). For Science, For Action, For Health. Retrieved

from URL: www.apha.org/what-is-public-health.

Aylward, B., Hennessey, K. A., Zagaria, N., Olive, J. M., & Cochi, S. (2000). When is a disease

eradicable? 100 years of lessons learned. American Journal of Public Health,

90(10)

CDC Image. (2016). Framework for Collaborative Action for Population Health and Health

Equity, and Association Community Development Processes Retrieved from URL

https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2010/nov/images/10_0079_01.gif

Corbett, E. L., Watt, C. J., Walker, N., Maher, D., Williams, B. G., Ravigilione, M. C., & Dye, C.

(2003). the growing burden of tuberculosis: global trends and interactions with the HIV

epidemic. Archives of internal medicine, 163(9), 1009-1021

Erwin, P. C. & Brownson, R. C. (2017). Principles of Public Health Practice. 4th Edition.

Cengage Learning

Immunization Safety Review. (2003). Immunization safety review: vaccination and sudden

unexpected death in infancy. National Academies Press.

Madsen, K. M. et.al. (2002). “A Population-Based Study of Measles, Mumps, and Rubella

Vaccination and Autism,” New England of Medicine, 347:1477-1482

Nsubuga, P., White, M. E., Thacker, S. B., Anderson, M. A., Blount, S. B., Broome, C. V., ... &

Stroup, D. F. (2006). Public health surveillance: a tool for targeting and monitoring

interventions.

Schneider, M. J. (2011). Introduction to Public Health. 3rd Edition. Jones & Bartlett Publishers

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Wharton, M., Chorba, T. L., Vogt, R. L., Morse, D. L., & Buehler, J. W. (1990). Case definitions

for public health surveillance. MMWR Recommend Rep, 39(RR-13), 1-43.