Community And Public Health

Background

The Department of community and public health is one of the departments created by ACP DYSS which is involved in design and execution projects linked to community and global health. More specifically, our work is centered around the sustainable development goal three (SDG 3) which is focused on Ensuring healthy lives and promoting wellbeing for all at all ages. The department strives for quality health for all residents in ACP countries. Our specialities at the community and public health department also include supporting in scientific writing, Statistical Data analysis, reporting and organising health education related workshops.

Presently, many ACP countries face several challenges related to health. It is vital for all stakeholders to work in synergy in order to achieve quality health for all nations. While many developed countries have eradicated several diseases that were threats to the health of these nations, several countries in the ACP and especially Africa are still suffering from some of these diseases and many other new diseases emerge every year as a result of poor hygiene, poor infrastructure to manage the sick, high poverty levels etc. A lot of work has to be done in Africa to alleviate these health-related problems. In most ACP countries, the youth constitute the majority of the population of these countries. It is thus important to engage them in carrying out activities that can promote health to their populations. As such that’s one of our main goals, working in different projects involving different stakeholders and youth specially to enable inhabitants of ACP countries and Africa in particular to live better and healthier lives.

Why should youths participate in Activities of Community and Public Health?

Most of the health challenges facing youth worldwide can be attributed to cultural, educational, socioeconomic problems and other factors. A document released by the United Nations in 2003 on youth and health issues titled World youth report 2003 stated that the youth are the future of the society but should be involved very much in its present. The same document stated that evidence from statistics and the experiences of youth serving in NGOs showed that despite the major shifts occurring in the world, adolescents who are happy and healthy are better equipped to contribute to their communities. This is also supported by the Commonwealth secretariat health and education hub as they recently concluded during a joint E-discussion on ‘Engaging young people in health and education policy‘ that various contributions supported the fact that involving young people as partners and leaders in addressing social development issues through planning, monitoring and evaluation could lead to better achievement of health and education goals. All these facts show that many organizations recognize youth as game changers when it comes to partaking in projects that can improve the health of their communities.

The department of community and public health ACP DYSS therefore strives to involve ACP diaspora youth to take part in community work that will improve the health of the population in which they live in and also helps them to be strong advocates in the domains of Gender Equality, Accessible and Affordable Health Care, Maternal and Child Health and Reproductive health.

Objectives of increasing youth participation in Community and Public Health:

To promote re-education of ACP diaspora youth through training, conferencing, workshops to enhance our ability to take up initiatives that would alleviate health problems in ACP communities.
To work together with health institutions in ACP countries to encourage/motivate ACP diaspora youth to participate as volunteers in health care systems to reduce their workload.
To work together with the ACP diaspora youth in organising, promoting and engaging in publicity and health sensitization campaigns in rural and urban areas in ACP countries to make great impacts on the lives of individuals living in these communities. Prevention remains the key to preventing diseases.
To encourage ACP diaspora youth to work in synergy with governments and other non-governmental organisations in ACP countries to develop health policies that can be beneficial to their nations. Also, to ensure that public health research is carried out in an ethical way in ACP countries by creating awareness through re-education on the importance of carrying out research in an ethical way.
To engage ACP diaspora youth on trainings to enhance data collection skills and to promote data collection in rural and urban communities in ACP countries to support the government and policy makers in taking important decisions that will positively affect the health care systems.

To achieve the stated objectives, ACP DYSS seeks and is open to funded projects, financial support, partnership, collaboration to enable her to achieve her objectives of equipping and empowering the youth towards achieving sustainable development.