Weekly Reflection #3

Primary medical care, primary prevention, and health promotion are the three main settings of social work in primary health care (Cowles, 2003).  Primary care emphasizes on the patient’s first entry into the health care system. We can find social workers in primary care in hospital outpatient clinics, HMOs, neighborhood health center clinics, and group medical practices (Miller, 1987).  Primary Prevention takes an effort to prevent the occurrence of health problems as well as very early identification and intervention.  Education, social change in the community or society, promotion of competency, promotion of natural care-giving, and consultation and collaboration are five major areas used to determine the health of a society for primary prevention.  Health promotion supports people and their communities to improve their health.  All these three settings, primary prevention, health promotion, and primary health care are based on an epidemiological perspective so that social workers can map out the cause or source of the health problems.  Social workers also lighten the social stress related with having health problems and utilization of social supports to enhance well-being and health protection. They make sure at-risk persons to have access to health care and social services in outreach area.  In order to look after their societies, social workers should have the ability to participate the interdisciplinary teamwork, and have to have knowledge on various areas.  It is interesting to learn that according to epidemiology, the victim is called the ‘host’, the causal factor is termed as ‘agent’, and the context in which these two come across each other is named the ‘environment’.

References

Cowles, L. A. F. (Ed.). (2003). Social work in the health field: A care perspective. (2nd ed.) Binghamton, NY: The Haworth Press.

Miller, I. (1987). Primary health care. Encyclopedia of social work. (8^th ed.). Washington, DC: NASW Press.