Discussion Topic Week 7

The discussion topic this week is “Should people who willingly engage in behavior that can cause self-infliction of disease or conditions be required to take health promotion or disease prevention classes?

I do not believe that requiring these people to take a class will change their behavior. In the example of cigarette smokers, I’m confident they are aware that it is not healthy for them to smoke. There are scientific studies, warning labels on the packages, proactive campaigns to spread awareness of the health issues, and even laws prohibiting smoking in certain areas. This has been going on for long enough in this country for it to be considered common knowledge that smoking cigarettes is bad for your health, and yet there are still many people who smoke. I have never met a person who wasn't aware of the possible consequences of smoking, and yet they are able to rationalize a reason for not quitting. This is actually a common theme in people who are addicted, whether it is to smoking, alcohol, or other drugs. There is actually an entire scientific journal dedicated to studying this type of behavior “AddictiveBehavior”. People who are addicted to something cannot be convinced by educational materials or disease prevention classes. It takes psychological help to determine the root cause of the problem causing them to self-harm, and then a plan to bring them back to positive behavior. This goes beyond anything provided in a health promotion class.

There are times when providing more information to someone is no longer beneficial. We see this a lot in public health, and it is the reason why we resort to implementing policy rather than relying on outreach programs. In the case of addictive drugs it is more effective to make them illegal than to implement an educational outreach program and require users to take a health promotion class. In that context it is easy to see how restricting access is the right choice. When we are talking about the context of over-eating, it becomes more difficult since we all have to eat to live. Finding a balance between educational outreach and restricting particularly unhealthy foods seems to be the current way of thinking, and it remains to be seen how effective it is. Again, most people understand that a cheeseburger, large fries, and a large soda is not a healthy meal, but that doesn't stop millions of people from eating them every day. With the current education programs most people should be aware that eating these unhealthy foods can lead to diabetes, heart disease, and many other deadly conditions, but that still doesn't stop them. It’s going to take a radical change in policy to truly address this issue, because people will never make the choice for themselves.