Hi there,Please refer to the attached files for instructions of the Blog 2 that needs to be completed. You will need to refer to assessment 1 word document also attached.Many thanks.
Self-reflective blog for Week 11 Reflexivity in Planetary Health GUIDELINES Due date: 11 October @ 9 am Weighting: 15% This blog assessment is designed to help you to complete Assessment 2 Advocacy Letter. In this blog, you are to reflexively consider your personal and/or professional standpoint in relation to the planetary health challenge you have researched. To help you get started 1. Explore why your chosen planetary health issue is important to you, to your family or communities that you identify with. 2. Consider the facilitators/ obstacles that you as a health promotion professional might encounter in advocating for change in addressing this issue with your chosen audience. How will you address these obstacles in your advocacy letter? Supporting your writing for blog assessment: Your response should be considered, and written in a tone appropriate for an academic audience. The evidence you provide for your response to question 1 will be your lived experiences to support your thinking as you engage with the literature pertaining to your chosen planetary health issue. For the next assessment (Task 3, the Advocacy Letter) you will need to select and research an audience. Give some reflective consideration to the audience you have chosen in order to address the second question. The evidence you provide in responding to the second question will be peer reviewed or grey literature. The identified facilitators/obstacles should be specific to your chosen audience. Recommended Reading Martin, & Landrigan. (2016). Global Health's Grand Challenge: A Healthy Planet and Healthy People. Annals of Global Health, 82(3), 317-318 Submission instructions: There should be one entry that contains your blog for that week. No cover sheet is required. ONE page maximum (excluding reference list). Font size between 10-12; Times New Roman or Arial; 2cm page margins. APA or Vancouver Marking criteria: Please submit to the appropriate link on the Turnitin site on Blackboard. There should be one entry that contains your blog for that week. Read the submission guideline on the BB submission site. No cover sheet is needed. Blogs not submitted on time and or not submitted to a satisfactory standard (e.g. written in bullet points, or incomplete sentences) will incur a 1% penalty. Students will receive zero for each blog they do not submit. The blogs are worth 100 points each and will be assessed based on the following criteria: Knowledge (evidence, content, knowledge and understanding): 40 Argument (logical flow of ideas and clarity, convincing argument): 40 Adheres to conventions of written English: 10 Appropriately referenced: 10 Assessment 1 – Written Report Planetary health can be considered as a complex yet simplified concern, which includes humans, their activities and how environment is affected through them. Planetary health is a collaborative approach that can be defined as the health of human civilisation and the state of the natural system upon which it depends. In much simplified context, effects of humans on natural environment and vice-versa can be considered as one of the major aspects through which this topic can be explained. Air pollution and more specifically chemical pollution is one of the biggest concerns with respect to environment degradation and human health. This is majorly because, everyone on this planet requires air and increased contamination directly leads to health deterioration. Moreover, through air pollution impact over health can be spread very fast and over a very large geographical area. This report focuses upon the impacts of chemical pollution upon the health of U.S. citizens. This report focuses upon the hazardous impacts of air pollution and specifically chemical pollution on the health of U.S. citizens over the course of time. Furthermore, this report will allow the policy makers to focus upon the areas untouched in order to control air pollution. Moreover, efforts will be made to explain the untouched health hazards of air pollution upon U.S. citizens and possible mitigation strategies. Shapiro and Walker (2015) mentioned in their study that the primary driver towards the reduction in pollution is environmental regulation. However, it may be necessary to consider that current environment policies may sound effective and efficient, yet they cannot help in order to eradicate this issue. Efforts may be made in order to reduce the effects upon the health of individuals, yet the deterioration cannot be prevented. Therefore, health promotion can be considered as one of the most effective tools that can help to improve the health of individuals towards planetary health challenges (Horton & Lo, 2015). Air pollution is one of the major concerns in the United States and more specifically chemical pollution. This is majorly because increasing number of contaminants in the air that individuals breathe can be hazardous for health. Increase in the concentration of these contaminants can lead to health issues such as asthma, bronchitis, respiratory inflammation and many other respiratory diseases. The United States have observed a significant decrease in air pollution levels of around 30%. This is being considered as a one of the major milestones achieved by policy makers. Popovich (2019) in a report mentioned that even if the skies are getting clearer more than 110 million Americans live in a country where the pollution levels are much higher than tolerance levels. Further, more than 100,000 Americans are expected to die prematurely due to illness as a result of increasing air pollution. According to the report presented by World Health Organization (2019) there is no escape from air pollution because the microscopic pollutants can easily slip into the body and enter respiratory and circulatory systems causing great damage to the heart, lungs and brain. The United States have been ranked number 23 in the world with respect to the deaths and diseases caused due to air and chemical pollution. Constible (2018) in their report mentioned the major causes as well as sources that have been identified to increase the concentration of particulate matter in air and ultimately cause air pollution. Power plants and other industrial processes have been identified as major contributors towards this because they are responsible for more than 77% of particulate matter released into the air. Further, transportation sectors have been identified as the second major air polluter as it contributes to around 10% of the total particulate matter leading to air pollution. Moreover, the rest of the particulate matter is being released by natural causes and wildfire smoke caused due to forest fires contributes around 16% of total particulate matter that increases the pollution levels. However, power plants and industries have been considered as the major culprits behind increasing chemical pollution or chemical concentration in air such as sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide and much more. Forest fires have been considered a major reason behind increasing concentrations of soot, smoke as well as smog, which is highly dangerous. Reports presented by Constible (2018) further suggested that wildfires have resulted in increased fine particle pollution in the U.S. especially in the Northwest region even after observing the decline of pollution in other areas. Moreover, due to human activities and the increased earth’s temperature, an expected increase in the wildfires may be observed and as a result, increased fine particle air pollution may increase beyond tolerance limits. Therefore, considering the above-mentioned arguments it may be necessary to consider that increasing pollution levels can be considered as a direct threat to human health and as a result, it may be necessary to imply and execute certain health promotion strategies as well as policies. It may be difficult to eradicate this issue however; health promotion activities could be considered as a major tool through which individual’s health can be protected from existing pollution. Air pollution does not abide to any boundaries and therefore, even if it is originated at a certain location, it may not pertain to that specific location instead it will spread to all the neighbouring locations. The Environment Protection Agency (EPA) has launched certain air quality reports through AirNow Air Quality Index. This may be used by the organization in order to communicate the pollution levels among citizens, which further can be considered as an effective health promotion strategy. Along with this, the American Public Health Association (APHA) have launched several health promotion policies in order to not only communicate this issue but also to communicate the potential mitigation strategies that can be adopted by individuals in order to protect their personal well-being (American Public Health Association, 2017). APHA Policy Statement 200012: Reducing the Rising Rates of Asthma has been considered as a policy statement along with the existing APHA policy statements for health promotion. The EPA has also enabled mobile sources rules, which are becoming cleaner and this has allowed the communities living in urban environments and especially low-income families to gain awareness (American Public Health Association, 2017). Moreover, clean air is a basic right of all U.S. individuals, irrespective of their colour, caste or religion. Hence, with respect to this, the EPA has called for more attention towards environmental justice. Further, there have been various collaborative and community level approaches implied by the EPA to promote health safety against raising concerns of air pollution. This was the first international conference, which reflected upon the importance of Health promotion with respect to increasing planetary challenges. A major focus of this conference was towards increasing public expectations around health and health related movements. Moreover, it included some serious discussion upon serious concerns related to industrialised countries and planetary challenges faced by them. According to this, health promotion can be considered as a process that allows and enables people to increase their control over health and improvement. Further, they associated health with various aspects around which an individual may be surrounded such as social, political and even personal resources as well as physical capabilities that vary from individual to individual. Therefore, healthy lifestyles have been considered as one of the major tools along with health promotion policies and strategies to increase the well-being of individuals. Health promotion actions according to the structure or framework developed suggested several aspects, which can be implied in order to promote health against air pollution in U.S. It is necessary to have effective and realistic health policies because they not only define the framework that can be used to mitigate the risk, but it also places health as an agenda that requires improvement. Therefore, a combination of diverse policies or strategies