Final Essay EXW 450
Kaivon Hayat
EXW 450: Fall: Session A
10/9/2014
Final Essay
“Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.” Although leaders and innovators might propose or institute change, they are not the ones who make it actually happen. It’s the people they lead and influence that actually make change happen. We work as teams to create policies and laws that are in the general public’s best interest, so why not work as a unit to rid the world of health disparities and inequalities. There are over 7 billion individuals in the world today, so it doesn’t make sense to focus on one individual at a time. It would be more productive and beneficial to focus on a group, community, or environment. Individual awareness and behavior are important, but if the goal is to initiate a positive change in the field of health behavior, the focus has to be on creating healthy supportive environments. Just because someone knows something is bad for them, doesn’t mean that they won’t they do it. Almost everyone knows that cigarettes are addicting and that they can cause cancer, but look at how many people you see every day from all walks of life still lighting up. Teaching people about health behavior and making them aware is important, but it shouldn’t be relied on by itself to make a lasting change in health behavior. It would take too much time to change every individual’s health behavior one by one, and it would not have as significant of an impact as it would if we changed one entire group or community. To really make a change we have to influence the behavior of a whole nation as a whole, but you can’t just go and fix everything all at once; you have to focus on one problem at a time.
One of the biggest reasons that health disparities and inequalities exist today is due to the un-proportionate balance of money through the working classes. This lopsided balance leads to vast differences in the quality and safety of our environments, the level of education we receive, and what
EXW 450: Fall: Session A
10/9/2014
Final Essay
“Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.” Although leaders and innovators might propose or institute change, they are not the ones who make it actually happen. It’s the people they lead and influence that actually make change happen. We work as teams to create policies and laws that are in the general public’s best interest, so why not work as a unit to rid the world of health disparities and inequalities. There are over 7 billion individuals in the world today, so it doesn’t make sense to focus on one individual at a time. It would be more productive and beneficial to focus on a group, community, or environment. Individual awareness and behavior are important, but if the goal is to initiate a positive change in the field of health behavior, the focus has to be on creating healthy supportive environments. Just because someone knows something is bad for them, doesn’t mean that they won’t they do it. Almost everyone knows that cigarettes are addicting and that they can cause cancer, but look at how many people you see every day from all walks of life still lighting up. Teaching people about health behavior and making them aware is important, but it shouldn’t be relied on by itself to make a lasting change in health behavior. It would take too much time to change every individual’s health behavior one by one, and it would not have as significant of an impact as it would if we changed one entire group or community. To really make a change we have to influence the behavior of a whole nation as a whole, but you can’t just go and fix everything all at once; you have to focus on one problem at a time.
One of the biggest reasons that health disparities and inequalities exist today is due to the un-proportionate balance of money through the working classes. This lopsided balance leads to vast differences in the quality and safety of our environments, the level of education we receive, and what