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Running head: PUBLIC HEALTH EDUCATION: REACHING THEIR GOALS

Public Health Education:


Reaching Their Goals, Through Three Functions and Writing.
Caitlin Vaughn
California State University of San Bernardino

PUBLIC HEALTH EDUCATION: REACHING THEIR GOALS


Public Health Education:


Reaching Their Goals, Through Three Functions and Writing.
When students apply to four year universities, they are usually applying to that certain
university because it offers an academic discourse community, that they want to join. Ann Johns
describes discourse communities as communities of practice, that share genres, lexis, and values
(Johns, 1997, p.500). The students might enter that discourse community and not know how they
communicate through writing, what their genre is, how explicit their text is, or when they
introduce their purpose. Now is the chance, to try and understand how public health
professionals reach their goal through writing. As a new student, entering into the public health
education program it is the perfect opportunity to to research how they write.
In the discourse community of public health education, they value the health of the
population. Youll see in the medical field that nurses or doctors work one on one with an
individual and theyll call that individual their patient. In the public health field, the patient is the
population. The Institute of Medicine redefined public health in a study called, The Future of
Public Health. Here they stated that public healths mission is, the fulfillment of societys
interest of assuring the conditions in people can be healthy (Institute of Medicine Staff, 1988, p.
40). By assuring the populations health, public health professionals need to carry out three
functions: assessment, policy development, and assurance. By applying those three functions, the
discourse community of public health will hopefully reach their goal of assuring the health of the
population.
Public health professionals assess the health status of populations to identify health
problems. By doing this, they will be able to see if programs are affecting the population in a
positive or negative direction. And to see if any programs are needed. Public health professionals

PUBLIC HEALTH EDUCATION: REACHING THEIR GOALS


assess populations by obtaining data and research older data, to see where the population is at
and what direction it is heading towards. In the book, Needs Assessment in Public Health: A
Practical Guide for Students and Professionals, stated that, data are critical to needs
assessment, because without data our knowledge is founded on opinion and speculation, not no
factual information (Peterson & Alexander, 2001, p.39).
Data that is collected can be communicated throughout the discourse in a variety of ways,
media, technology, hearings, studies, reports, or publications. When the data is being
communicated to others by a report or study, it must be explicit, so the individual that is reading
it will know what the health status of the population is. A study that was conducted to show to a
novice how research is turned into law was done by Mercer, Sleet, Elder, Cole, Shults, and
Nichols. In this case study they were explicit in their information they shared. For example, after
reading through the introduction, it was stated that, In 2008, 11,773 people were killed in
alcohol-impaired driving crashes, accounting for nearly one-third (32%) of all traffic-related
deaths in the United States (2008). Of the 1347 fatalities among children ages 0 to 14 years in
2008, approximately one of every six involved an alcohol impaired driver (2008). Every day, 32
people in the united states die in a motor vehicle crashes that involve alcohol-impaired drivers,
amounting to one death every 45 minutes (Mercer, Sleet, Elder et al., 2010, p. 412-413). By
reading this first section in this study the reader will know from the start what the issue is. Public
health professionals pull data from other sources, to compare their data to the past.
In public health professionals writing, you will see that they inform the reader, where the
health status of the population once was, where they are now, and where they want the
population to be. In the study written by Shults, Elder, Sleet, Nichols, Alao, Carande-Kulis,
Zaza, Sosin, Thompson, and the Task Force on Community Preventive Services, they stated that:

PUBLIC HEALTH EDUCATION: REACHING THEIR GOALS


Data provided by NHTSA and the U.S. Bureau of the Census in 1999 indicate that the
United States nearly met the Healthy People 2000 objective for alcohol-related motor
vehicle deaths of no more than 5.5 deaths per 100,000 persons, with a rate of 5.8 per
100,000 per- sons. The Healthy People 2010 target for alcohol- related motor vehicle
fatalities is 4.0 per 100,000 per- sons or fewer. Meeting the 2010 objective will require a
further decrease of 31% in the rate of alcohol-related motor vehicle fatalities. (Shults,
Elder, Sleet, et al., 2001, p.67).
This is informing the reader that in 1999 the united states had a rate of 5.8 per 100,000 per-sons
that were killed in an accident due to alcohol, this is where we once were. Now we are at
approximately 5.2 per 100,000 per-sons and they want the population at 4.0. This is the type of
information that is needed when a policy is trying to be developed. In another example, that was
given by Mercer et al. (2010) they wrote about the BAC laws prior to what they are now.
NHTSA proposed that all states should adopt 0.08 BAC laws, that was in 1992. In 1997, fifteen
states had 0.08 laws, by the 2000s thirty-one states had 0.10 BAC laws, which made the United
States having the highest BAC laws in the world (Mercer et al., 2010, p.413).
Through policy development, public health professionals come together with other
organizations and present their findings to the congress. One of John Swales characteristics of a
discourse community was having participants to provide information and feedback (p.221). As
in the study that was done by Mercer et al. (2010) they shared that the Division of Unintentional
Injury Prevention and the Community Guide staff gathered all their research and presented their
information to other organizations. They then sent out more than 600 packets with their research.
And by 2000, President Clinton signed the law that by 2003 all states had to enforce the 0.08

PUBLIC HEALTH EDUCATION: REACHING THEIR GOALS


BAC law (p. 416). Policy development, need participants to handle different jobs and to supply
feedback.
Public health professionals put into action their third function, which is assurance. They
assure that laws are now protecting the population. They do this by their method of surveillance.
Public health professionals will keep an ongoing collection of data. By keeping track of the
status of the populations health, it will assure them that their new law is protecting the
population.
In the public health discourse community, an outsider might not know what some of their
lexis are, which can be confusing. Johns Swales defined a lexis being a specialized language
through the community discourse (p.222). Even a new student entering a public health program
could be confused. In a lot of public health professionals writing youll see that they use
acronyms for different agencies. In the article by Mercer et al., acronyms were used throughout.
Some examples are, At the time the TEA-21 Authorization Bill was considered, only four
published studies (Mercer et al., 2010, p.413). Or To assist states, DUIP developed and,
with NHTSAs assistance, implemented a formal dissemination plan for the 0.08 BAC and
related Community guide motor reviews (Mercer et al., 2010, p.416). To an individual outside or
a newcomer would not know what these acronyms mean, so it could get confusing reading these
texts.
Public health professionals value the health of the population; they view it as their
patient. They go through great deals of research to view where the populations health status is at.
If the health status is in a bad position, they come together with other public health professionals
and think of ways that will better the population health. If it is by creating new programs or laws.
After a new law or programs is created, they will continue to do research on the population to see

PUBLIC HEALTH EDUCATION: REACHING THEIR GOALS



how the program or law is effecting the population. Understanding how public health
professionals write, will better a student that is entering a public health program in their future,
as a student and a new public health professional.

PUBLIC HEALTH EDUCATION: REACHING THEIR GOALS


Resources
Institute of Medicine (U.S.). Committee for the Study of the Future of Public Health (1988). The
Future of Public Health. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
Johns, A. M. (1997). Discourse communities and communities of practice: Membership, conflict,
and diversity. Text, Role and Context: Developing Academics Literacies (pp. 51-70).
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Mercer, S. , Sleet, D. , Elder, R. , Cole, K. , Shults, R. , et al. (2010). Translating evidence into
policy: Lessons learned from the case of lowering the legal blood alcohol limit for
drivers. Annals of Epidemiology, 20(6), 412-420.
Peterson, D. , & Alexander, G. (2001). Needs Assessment in Public Health: A Practical Guide
for Students and Professionals. New York: Kluwer Academic.
Shults, R. , Elder, R. , Sleet, D. , Nichols, J. , Alao, M. , et al. (2001). Reviews of evidence
regarding interventions to reduce alcohol-impaired driving. American Journal of
Preventive Medicine, 21(4), 66-88. doi:10.1016/S0749-3797(01)00381-6
Swales, John. (1990). The Concept of Discousre Community. Genre Analysis: English in
Academic and Research Settings. (pp. 21-32). Boston: Cambridge University Press.

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