VCAA Health and Human Development Promoting health in Australia

Food: Having access to safe, nutritionally adequate and culturally appropriate food from local sources allows people to gain adequate nutrients to complete daily tasks. These nutrients boost the immune system to reduce the likelihood of conditions such as influenza, reducing morbidity from decreased respiratory function as a prerequisite for physical and overall health.

Income: Having access to enough money can allow people to buy basic needs like food, water and shelter required to improve health. By not struggling to buy basic necessities to survive people's stress and anxiety in meeting their needs can be reduced to promote mental health and wellbeing.

Action area 1: Strengthen community action could involve partnership between local gyms, schools and local government to provide young people with a series of fun, free physical activity sessions tailored to their age group, that could assist in making exercise more fun. This could make young Australians more likely to engage in physical activity and do so ongoingly as they develop a positive and fun relationship with exercise.

Action area 2: Create supportive environments: This relates to creating/changing physical and sociocultural environments to promote health outcomes. This could include changing the physical environment by building more parks and walkways and playgrounds that provide more areas for young Australians to be physically active in, increasing the likelihood of engaging in physical exercise, reducing the low levels of physical activity among young Australians.

Develop personal skills: refers to increasing individuals health related knowledge and skills so that they have increased capacity to make decisions regarding their health, allowing them to make healthier decisions, such as consuming adequate amounts of vegetables. The NSW Knockout Health challenge provides Aboriginal Australians with group cooking classes so that they have the skills and are better able to cook nutritious meals. Similarly it provides nutrition or physical activity education lessons to allow them to have the knowledge to maintain a healthy body weight and promote their physical health and wellbeing.

Similarity: Both the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Guide to Healthy Eating and the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating are visual tools that visually represent the proportion of each of the five food groups that should be consumed, including fruits, vegetables and legumes, meats and alternatives, dairy foods and grains.

Difference: The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Guide to Healthy Eating features foods from Indigenous cultures such as bush fruits and kangaroo meat, whereas the Australian Guide to Healthy eating does not contain these cultural foods and has more generic items.

Housing: People may not have the resources to adequately prepare and cook foods, such as an oven or stove making it difficult to cook nutritious foods at home. This may mean they rely on convenient foods such as microwavable meals or takeaway, which are high in saturated fats, salt and sugar, rather than fresh produce that requires cooking making it difficult to bring about positive nutritional change.

For example: X-rays and GP consultations (see marking criteria for more accepted answers).

Funding: Medicare provides funding to Australians by providing funds to subsidise costs of essential healthcare services for example covering the cost treatment at a public hospital which otherwise may have been too expensive for an individual to cover. This means that Australians are able to get quality treatment such as tumour removal surgery which can allow them to stay free from disease, promoting physical health and wellbeing (HWB). Equity: The Medicare Safety Net provides extra financial help to people who have incurred significant out of pocket costs on Medicare covered services in a calendar year. This means that for the rest of the year Medicare provides extra financial help to alleviate some of the financial stress patients who require on going and frequent medical attention need, thus helping to lower anxiety levels as well and promote mental HWB.

For example: To reduce waiting times for elective surgery, and for a choice of doctor that treats them in hospital (see marking criteria for more accepted answers).

The PBS is a federal government funded scheme that subsidises the cost of a wide range of prescription medicines to provide Australians with access to cost effective essential medicines at an affordable price. Specifically, it is funded through taxation collected by the federal government. Indeed, the PBS aims to ensure that people have access to the medicines they require, such as blood thinners for treating cardiovascular disease by removing the financial barrier of income. Thus, those who are ill are more likely to be able to afford the medicines they need due to PBS funding subsidising their cost, therefore helping to promote access.

Furthermore the PBS safety net provides additional financial support to those that require a significant amount of medicines in one year once the threshold (＄1550.70) is reached. The government specifically funds this by making co-payments reduced to concession prices through offering concession cards, thus helping to support those who are financially burdened due to chronic conditions requiring medicines, promoting equity.

Medicare is Australia’s universal health insurance scheme by which the Federal government subsidises some or all of the costs of necessary health care. By only providing funds towards health services deemed necessary, the Federal government ensures that the cost of running Medicare remains sustainable into the future. This could allow for an individual with a health condition, such as cardiovascular disease, which may require numerous surgeries such as stents and heart by-pass surgery, to continue accessing free treatment in public hospitals now and into the future, reducing the likelihood that they will suffer a fatal heart attack and thereby reducing Australia’s mortality rates attributed to this condition.

Medicare also promotes equity through the Medicare Safety net, which ensures that individuals who have reached a threshold amount of out-of-pocket expenses on Medicare services in a calendar year can access all further services at a reduced price, and thereby providing extra support to those with enhanced health needs. This could reduce the financial stress and anxiety of someone who requires a multitude of treatments for chronic conditions, such as type 2 diabetes, improving Australia’s mental health and wellbeing.

Cigarettes and e-cigarettes contain carcinogens which when consumed, can cause faults in the body’s cells as they divide, which can lead to tumours. Hence increased smoking and vaping can increase the prevalence of cancer in Australia.

Cigarettes and e-cigarettes also contain harmful chemicals that lead to a build-up of plaque in the arteries, atherosclerosis, which can increase the likelihood of a heart attack. Hence, increased rates of smoking and vaping can increase mortality rates from heart attack and other cardiovascular diseases in Australia.

The social model of health, which incorporates the Ottawa Charter, involves health promotion programs such as the Quit program. The Quit program, through its free website provides tools, such as, recommending people to distract themselves with a video if they feel the urge to smoke. This example of helping individuals ‘Develop Personal Skills’ shows how the Quit program equips smokers with the skills to quit their smoking addiction, hence increasing the likelihood that they will persist and quit. This can reduce overall rates of smoking and vaping.

Individually: If smoking/vaping rates are reduced, people are more likely have better functioning of their body systems and attend work, therefore earn an income to afford a decent standard of living and necessities such as food, shelter. Therefore, acting as a resource for individuals.

Nationally: Reducing smoking/vaping rates reduces risks of associated health conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). This means nationally more people can experience optimal physical health and wellbeing by being free of disease and illness. This means less hospitalisation from fatal COPD conditions, reducing the strain on the health system, allowing more funds to be diverted towards infrastructure by the government, acting as a resource nationally.

Fibre is responsible for clearing the digestive tract and adding bulk to the faeces. If the digestive tract is cleared, the risk of abnormal cell growth in the digestive tract and colorectal cancer is reduced. Therefore adequate fibre intake can result in a reduction of mortality related to colorectal cancer.

Fibre provides feelings of fullness, which can prevent individuals from overeating and consuming excess energy, which would be stored as adipose tissue. The reduction in adipose tissue reduces the risk of an individual developing obesity or obesity related condition like type 2 diabetes, resulting in a lower incidence of type 2 diabetes when fibre is adequately consumed.

Nutrition Australia publishes recipes free of charge on their website. These recipes could contain ingredients, like broccoli, which are high in fibre. This means the Australian population can follow, cook and consume these recipes, helping to increase their fibre intake.

The Australian Dietary Guidelines are effective in increasing fibre intake as by encouraging people to enjoy a wide variety of foods from the five food groups every day (guideline 2), the guidelines encourage adequate consumption of foods from grain (cereal) foods, as well as high intake of fruits and vegetables, which are high in fibre and can increase fibre intake. However, the Australian Dietary Guidelines do not provide information on specific serving sizes, so Australians may believe they are consuming an adequate amount of high fibre fruits or vegetables, however it is actually not the recommended amount of fibre. The Australian Dietary Guidelines may also promote increased fibre intake by encouraging Australians to ‘limit foods containing saturated fat, added salt and added sugars and alcohol’, by reducing consumption of discretionary foods, people are more likely to increase consumption of complex carbohydrates and vegetables which are high in fibre.

Australians may have taste preferences for low-fibre sugary foods such as sweets, over high-fibre foods such as vegetables. These taste preferences are formed over time and can be difficult to break, posing a challenge to changing one’s diet to increase fibre intake, particularly if people do not like the taste of high-fibre foods.

Obesity is a direct risk factor for cardiovascular disease, as excess body fat and adipose tissue due to obesity places greater strain on the heart to pump blood around the body, increasing blood pressure and the risk of developing cardiovascular disease. Therefore, the prevention of obesity would reduce the risk of developing cardiovascular disease and positively impact health status by reducing morbidity rates of cardiovascular disease.

Global marketing of processed foods specifically targets children in all countries. Organisations adopt such aggressive marketing tactics for children to make processed foods appear fun and tasty. This means children are more likely to consume processed foods from organisations such as McDonalds and may develop taste preferences for these unhealthy foods. Taste preference can be difficult to change as well as associations that processed foods are fun. This may mean that children may struggle to consume healthier foods, such as fruit and vegetables, due to preferring the tasty, fun nature of processed foods, thus making dietary improvements difficult to achieve.