In this written assignment, students will consider a public health intervention recently reported in the media. Students should consider what kind of intervention is being described, and what evidence is being presented in favour for, or against, the intervention. Choose a recent article (no more than three months old) from a readily available media source (e.g., newspaper, online news, etc.) that is about a public health intervention.

Public health intervention is one of the most reported and most discussed topics throughout all forms of media but this is just not an item for news, rather the public health intervention is intricately related to the real-world lives(Rudolph and Viswanath, 2004). Therefore, an analysis of such an article would be highly relevant. 

The Article

The chosen article for this topic is titled St Vincent’s Health Australia proposes higher alcohol taxes, national lockout laws, reported by Naomi Woodley and collected from the online portal of the ABC news (Woodley, 2016). The suggestion is to increase the alcohol tax so that in order to reduce crime and prolong the lives of Australian citizens.

Public Health Intervention

The issue of public health intervention, reported in the article, is related to health protection. The article reports that St. Vincent Health, one of the most reliable non-profit Australian organizations to provide healthcare services, has claimed that the government can reduce damage by alcohol consumption by increasing alcohol tax. The article reports that an increase in the prices would make the consumers reluctant toward alcohol consumption to some extent. Thus, a number of health problems can be avoided and prevented. This issue is extremely relevant because it is being reported that uncontrolled alcohol consumption causes domestic violence and critical diseases (Woodley, 2016). This issue is not only related to the alcohol consumer and his/ her family, rather the whole society feels the impact of this problem.

Evidence

The article has presented multiple pieces of evidence generated from observational studies. It is reported that about 157,000 alcohol consumers of Australia have to be admitted to the hospitals per year(Woodley, 2016). The article also reports that about 60 percent of the crime in Australia is directly related to the consumption of alcohol (Woodley, 2016). It has been presented how the Australians have access to high-volume alcohol at a minimal price (11% proof at $2.5).

(Some parts of the solution has been blurred due to privacy protection policy)