Haley Baumgartner
Health 100
Stephanie Fugal

The person I interviewed is MaryAnn Moyer who is the Head of Infectious Control at Mountain Vista Hospital in Mesa, Arizona. I find it interesting reading other posts and compare them to MaryAnn's top issues because of the variety of issues that health practitioners find throughout public health.

1. A main Issue that is taking place in health communities is members of communities not getting their vaccinations done. Vaccinations are vital in keeping our communities healthy and also preventing disease outbreaks. If People are not getting their vaccinations done then they are not only putting themselves at risk for illnesses and diseases, but they are putting their communities in danger of these things as well. A main aspect of Public Health is disease prevention, which cannot be promoted if the right precautions are being used to do so.  Vaccinations are key to keeping a healthy community and keeping an environment that is safe for people of all ages, races, and lifestyles.

2. The government, as of late, is what has been taking over healthcare, which in the end, is leading to less people having healthcare coverage. Many people are unable to afford healthcare, which is a problem because, once again, more illnesses and diseases are being spread throughout communities due to lack of proper treatments. Insurance has become very expensive which is leading to lower class citizens being unable to get proper coverage when it comes to healthcare. Although lower class citizens don’t make up a huge part of communities, they are still a part of it, so when they become ill, their ailments are still being spread to all of the members of society. All citizens need to be able to get their proper care so that the community can remain a decently healthy place.

3. Immigrants have become an issue over the past few decades in America. The reason this is a problem is because they are bringing different diseases with them that may not be present in the U.S. or they are just bringing new cases of other diseases to America with them. If they are bringing new diseases with them to America then we will not have to proper treatments and vaccinations to prevent disease outbreaks in the country. All in all, disease prevention plays a huge part in public health, so these disease outbreaks will cause much distress and panic to not only these public health practitioners, but also to the country. Public health keeps this country safe and sane, allowing members to feel safe in their environment, if immigrants continue bringing diseases with them, then many problems will form and cause an uproar throughout the country because of these disease outbreaks, which is why immigration needs to be better controlled.

4. Another issue brought up was how Nurse practitioners are being paid only 70% of what Physician’s assistants make, when in actuality, they have the exact same job, PA’s are just allowed to prescribe a larger variety of medicines. As Americans, it is a citizen’s right to have equality, and in this case, this practice is not being followed through. Nurse practitioners and PA’s all have one focus: helping their patients to prevent diseases, and if not prevent, then control them. Nurse practitioners and PA’s all have the same amount of schooling, yet nurse practitioners, for some reason, are only allowed to prescribe a limited amount of medications, preventing them from fully helping their patients. If both occupations have the same amount of schooling and, in the end, are doing the same job, they all deserve to be paid the same amount and be able to help their patients in all the exact same ways to fully benefit their patients.

5. Lastly, in our current healthcare system only a certain amount of days spent in the hospital is covered at a time. For example, if an elderly person spends all of those covered days in the hospital, and then they are released, but a few days later get an infection and need to go back to the hospital, insurance will not cover that next stay in the hospital. After a certain amount of time after the first hospital visit, then those days are renewed and insurance will pay for it. Because of this, many people who do get infections right after they are released from the hospital will wait until that time has passed so that they can stay at the hospital again, while still having insurance pay for it. This is a problem because it results in many of these people who wait getting even more ill and then possibly dying, or needing to spend more time in the hospital, which leads to, once again, insurance not covering the rest of their stay in the hospital.