(Download) "Social Work Interest in Prevention: A Content Analysis of the Professional Literature (Report)" by Social Work ~ Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Social Work Interest in Prevention: A Content Analysis of the Professional Literature (Report)
- Author : Social Work
- Release Date : January 01, 2011
- Genre: Social Science,Books,Nonfiction,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 224 KB
Description
Every day in the United States, over half a million social workers provide services to people suffering from health, mental health, and substance abuse disorders and problems (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2007).The delivery of this care occurs in a fragmented system that emphasizes disease treatment over prevention, uses a maze of bureaucratic structures to contain spiraling costs, and fails to meet a significant portion of the population's needs (Schroeder, 2007).Although advances in public health, medicine, technology, and social sciences have unquestionably fueled overall health improvements in the United States during the last century, multiple indicators suggest that health progress has stalled and that the current system is in crisis (Turnock, 2007). Americans now spend more than citizens of any other country on health care; by 2015, it is estimated that a full 20 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product will be spent on health care (Borger et al., 2006).Yet the results of this investment are unclear, as disparities are rampant, and the United States ranks poorly in comparison with other nations on nearly every measure of health status (Relman, 2007; Schroeder, 2007). For example, the United States ranks 46th in life expectancy and 42nd in infant mortality among 192 nations (Borger et al., 2006). One recent study found higher rates of chronic disease prevalence and medication usage in the United States than in 10 European countries that spend considerably less on health (Thorpe, Howard, & Galactionova, 2007). Deeply embedded ethnic, racial, gender, income, and geographic inequities are pervasive in health outcome measures, reflecting the broad and persistent unequal conditions that shape population health and well-being (Satcher & Higginbotham, 2008; Warnecke et al., 2008).These disparities--the result of multifaceted socioeconomic, systems, and policy issues--have proven intractable within the current health care context despite substantive efforts to address them (Voelker, 2008). One of the systemic factors involved in producing disparities, lack of insurance and underinsurance, continues to dramatically increase in the United States. Some 47 million Americans, almost 18 percent of the U.S. population, lack health insurance of any kind, and many millions more are underinsured (Johnson, 2007).The health consequences are well known to social workers and make our work more complex. Uninsured individuals disproportionately hail from socially disadvantaged and stigmatized groups; they receive fewer preventive and health-related services, which leads to increased need for interventions when care is finally accessed and to generally worse health outcomes (Hadley, 2006).
 "Social Work Interest in Prevention: A Content Analysis of the Professional Literature (Report)" by Social Work ~ Book PDF Kindle ePub Free){kind=link}