How Laws Affect Your Health: Crash Course Public Health #8

beginning in the nineteen fifties American orthopedic surgeon added noted sports costs an attic Dr John states it was working as a position at the Watkins Glen international speedway in New York state while working the job at doctor states witnessed countless high speed crash but he noticed that even though the rise because we're going much faster than Qassem highway the drivers were actually more likely to walk

away from crashes without serious injury compared to drivers on the open road Dr states accredited this to safety precautions like seat belts and helmets back then that they would view safe driving laws in place and driving related deaths and injuries in the U. S. were sky rocketing because didn't even come with seat belts Dr states knew it that a change was needed over the next several

decades he conducted research on sebi it crashes and even designed and patented his very own seat belt he became one of the country's leading advocates of seat belts and challenged policymakers in New York to improve automotive safety finally in nineteen ninety four New York became the first U. S. state to mandate the use of seat belts thanks largely to doctor states is decades of work today

at forty nine states have adopted similar seatbelt laws and say about use has continued to grow from eleven percent in nineteen ninety one to around ninety percent in twenty twenty saving almost fifteen thousand lives in twenty seventeen a line while cutting the risk of serious injury by fifty percent looking back at we might call this an almost perfect fairytale ending to a story about how public

health and policy can come together to improve and save lives but it's not always so simple in the moment if you've been paying attention up since about twenty twenty you're no doubt familiar with the tension that can come with crofting health policy when public health crises arise the people who make policies can I often find themselves in the difficult position of having to balance some people's

freedom to do what they want with other people's rights to be healthy hi I'm Vanessa hill and this is crashed because public health when we talk about health and policy we're talking about policies that change human behavior or their environments to improve the overall health and well being that's health policy it sounds simple enough but sometimes it can get complicated my get consider the issue of

smoking in indoor public settings this impacts the health of the smoke up but also the health of the non smoking people around them because they can wind up in hailing the same potentially harmful chemicals that that's mica is inhaling voluntarily governments have struggled for a long time with how to tackle this issue but it wasn't until two thousand and four that Ireland became the first country

in the world to ban smoking in all indoor workplaces these smoking bans as policy belt laws like the ones recommended by doctors states are an example of a mandate or legal order that tells people all companies house asked again this year being that you're living in a world that was affected by the carpet nineteen pandemic the idea of a mandate may be familiar to you but

policies dines and often comments just tell people to be healthy %HESITATION so policy makers need a few different tools in their health policy tool box some of these tools up policies that aim to educate people take it healthy eating for instance there's no no all knowing frozen pizza bagel police who were going to come knocking if we had won the Michael too many weeds tonight as

a non American I learned is actually just a bagel with pizza toppings on it but the flip that pizza bagel box %HESITATION but and we see a list of nutrition facts that are there to remind us exactly what we are and islands putting into our bodies in the US those nutrition facts and that because of the nutrition labeling and Education Act which was signed in nineteen

ninety and basically says that people have a right to know what they're putting into their bodies this is why even the most eye catching mouth watering stomach a grumbling food packaging out there still needs to clearly feature those are you sorry recognizable nutrition facts this can include all the information to lock in some countries there are warnings on the front of products that contain excessive levels

of things like sugar or sodium another complicated and heavily debated but nine to be good at issue that policy makers must grapple with is vaccination or boosting the body's defenses against the disease with the vaccine can sit up measles a highly infectious disease most commonly associated with health complications among children in nineteen twelve missiles became common enough in the U. S. that it was named a

nationally notifiable disease which is a disease that healthcare providers must report to local health departments measles continue to be so common that by nineteen sixty three nearly every child was expected to get measles by the time they were fifteen and up to four million people in the U. S. what infected every year measles was also responsible for up to five hundred deaths and forty eight thousand

hospitalizations each year however up policies requiring childhood vaccinations over the last several decades have meant that an increasing number of people have become vaccinated against measles improving overall childhood health and in the U. two thousand measles was declared a limited from the U. S. thanks largely to the push from governments and public health authorities to get kids vaccinated for the record eliminated it doesn't mean that

there hasn't been a single case of measles just that there hasn't been an observed spread of the disease that lasted longer than in different countries approach vaccination policy in different ways in a twenty nineteen analysis of over a hundred and forty countries eighty nine were found to have some form of nation wide mandatory vaccine policy for children and in twenty countries including the U. S. thanks

nation was only mandatory for entry into school meanwhile thirty three countries recommended childhood vaccinations but didn't mandate policies also affect our health in ways that aren't quite as obvious is giving out immune systems are based like a by environmental regulations for example in nineteen seventy with the help of health experts politicians and factory workers the US policy the clean air act which regulated the emissions of

hazardous pollutants from things like vehicles and factories from nineteen seventy until twenty twenty the combined emissions of six common air pollutants was found to have decreased by seventy eight percent this has had strong health impacts by preventing premature deaths and other negative health outcomes like as my bronchitis and heart attacks but around the world the governments have had a lot of success improving health through policies

and programs let's go to the thought bubble and while we're at it let's go to Brazil sorry for a long time Brazil has been pretty clear about one thing health is a human rights its constitution literally says that health is a right to be enjoyed by all and a duty of the states and Brazil takes this very seriously whether you've lived in Brazil your whole life

all your foreign resident in the country Brazil office free healthcare and its hospitals and clinics as part of its universal health care program it's also being very quick to respond to disease outbreaks such as HIV infections and subsequent aids cases as global cases of aids doubled or even tripled among certain groups from two thousand and six to twenty fifteen Brazil responded rapidly to the trend thanks

in part to community led efforts by providing free treatment to all HIV positive adults who sought in twenty seventeen to Brazil became the first country in Latin America to incorporate a preventative pill for HIV into its healthcare policy by making the pill available to whoever wants it the bill has been tested and proven to dramatically decrease the chances of contracting HIV when someone takes it every

day to help make this possible at the Brazilian health ministry made a deal with the drug's manufacturer to buy the drug for about seventy five cents per device which drastically increased accessibility to preventative treatment for people in Brazil thanks thought bubble sorry these are some of the ways that we use policy E. to influence our health but it turns out that a lot of the policies

that impact our health actually health policies in the traditional sense instead these policies have incorrect unintended consequences on al health and often if not for the better consider zoning laws which basically regulate how land is used and developed they regulate what land can be used for hiring this shopping malls factories and so on and these are supposed to be laws a balanced land not people but

it turns out the people also use land for you know our existing so it shouldn't be a surprise that these laws also affect human health like an indirect result of zoning laws is that people living in low income and densely populated communities often find themselves living dangerously close to industrial facilities this can lead to exposure to poor air quality and toxic waste which can increase the

rates of asthma cancer and chronic disease when it comes to who creates and drops these policies that when mostly talking about governments most countries also have a department of health or a ministry of health %HESITATION I need something of health which is a government branch dedicated to what the saying and improving the population health in that country and often this power is spread out across different

levels of government like in the United States at the power to create and enforce health policies is shared between the federal government states cities and smaller localities but pathogens and diseases don't really care about our imaginary political and geographical lines sorry who helps countries coordinate the efforts to respond to your site a global public health crisis no word literally true the W. H. all the World

Health Organization is an agency of the United Nations responsible for overseeing international public health the W. H. O. is made up of around eight thousand doctors and public health specialists scientists and other experts who help governments and that scientists learn from each other share resources and work together to keep the global community healthy but not all health policies have their origins in fancy wood paneled government

rooms all of high tech research labs some of the biggest drivers of innovations in health policy have begun on the streets with groups of everyday people coming together to demand health policy change these are social justice movements after all held is a human rights and activists have long been part of the story of how health has been protected and improved one such movement has revolved around

the HIV and aids epidemic since the nineteen eighties as governments around the world avoided taking action against the rapidly spreading disease just in the United States over forty thousand people were HIV positive by nineteen eighty seven and globally more than sixty thousand people have died from the syndrome in response the citizens in the U. S. formed the aids coalition to unleash power or act up an

organization that protest at the FDA's slow and I pay good drug approval policy which resulted in thousands dead from lack of access to life saving drugs following widespread protests around the country at the process was accelerated and better information about the disease and treatment it became more widely available to the public and the public health community policies are an opportunity to break down barriers to health

and improve health fault well pretty much everyone but without continued evaluation other policies and without placing affected communities and health experts at the forefront of policy efforts these policies can also lead to health inequities and systemic failures that let people down health policies are important but the health to truly improve for everyone health should be considered in all our policies whether they're about car safety evolution

well yes even pizza bagels I'll see you next time thanks for watching this episode of crest because public health which was produced by complex Lee in partnership with the American public health association if you want to learn even more about public health how do I go to a PH eyes YouTube channel to watch that's public health yeah I did buy a P. H. I. and complex

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