You are serving as a volunteer member of your community board and have learned that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has an initiative called Health Impact in 5 Years (HI-5). Interventions are based on the health impact pyramid factors that affect health.
Respond to the following:
Identify the top two priorities that you believe exist in the city or county that you live in that are on the list of health conditions in the HI-5 article. Explain what evidence you see in your community to show that these are issues.
Choose one of the top two priorities you selected, and write a 1-2 sentence proposal of a new law or regulation that will effectively address the top priority you selected.
Using the Health Impact Pyramid diagram in the HI-5 article, identify what level of the health impact pyramid your recommended law/regulation fits into.
Sample solution
Dante Alighieri played a critical role in the literature world through his poem Divine Comedy that was written in the 14th century. The poem contains Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The Inferno is a description of the nine circles of torment that are found on the earth. It depicts the realms of the people that have gone against the spiritual values and who, instead, have chosen bestial appetite, violence, or fraud and malice. The nine circles of hell are limbo, lust, gluttony, greed and wrath. Others are heresy, violence, fraud, and treachery. The purpose of this paper is to examine the Dante’s Inferno in the perspective of its portrayal of God’s image and the justification of hell.
In this epic poem, God is portrayed as a super being guilty of multiple weaknesses including being egotistic, unjust, and hypocritical. Dante, in this poem, depicts God as being more human than divine by challenging God’s omnipotence. Additionally, the manner in which Dante describes Hell is in full contradiction to the morals of God as written in the Bible. When god arranges Hell to flatter Himself, He commits egotism, a sin that is common among human beings (Cheney, 2016). The weakness is depicted in Limbo and on the Gate of Hell where, for instance, God sends those who do not worship Him to Hell. This implies that failure to worship Him is a sin.
God is also depicted as lacking justice in His actions thus removing the godly image. The injustice is portrayed by the manner in which the sodomites and opportunists are treated. The opportunists are subjected to banner chasing in their lives after death followed by being stung by insects and maggots. They are known to having done neither good nor bad during their lifetimes and, therefore, justice could have demanded that they be granted a neutral punishment having lived a neutral life. The sodomites are also punished unfairly by God when Brunetto Lattini is condemned to hell despite being a good leader (Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). While he commited sodomy, God chooses to ignore all the other good deeds that Brunetto did.
Finally, God is also portrayed as being hypocritical in His actions, a sin that further diminishes His godliness and makes Him more human. A case in point is when God condemns the sin of egotism and goes ahead to commit it repeatedly. Proverbs 29:23 states that “arrogance will bring your downfall, but if you are humble, you will be respected.” When Slattery condemns Dante’s human state as being weak, doubtful, and limited, he is proving God’s hypocrisy because He is also human (Verdicchio, 2015). The actions of God in Hell as portrayed by Dante are inconsistent with the Biblical literature. Both Dante and God are prone to making mistakes, something common among human beings thus making God more human.
To wrap it up, Dante portrays God is more human since He commits the same sins that humans commit: egotism, hypocrisy, and injustice. Hell is justified as being a destination for victims of the mistakes committed by God. The Hell is presented as being a totally different place as compared to what is written about it in the Bible. As a result, reading through the text gives an image of God who is prone to the very mistakes common to humans thus ripping Him off His lofty status of divine and, instead, making Him a mere human. Whether or not Dante did it intentionally is subject to debate but one thing is clear in the poem: the misconstrued notion of God is revealed to future generations.
References
Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). Dante’s inferno: Seven deadly sins in scientific publishing and how to avoid them. Addiction Science: A Guide for the Perplexed, 267.
Cheney, L. D. G. (2016). Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno: A Comparative Study of Sandro Botticelli, Giovanni Stradano, and Federico Zuccaro. Cultural and Religious Studies, 4(8), 487.
Verdicchio, M. (2015). Irony and Desire in Dante’s” Inferno” 27. Italica, 285-297.
Sample Answer
Sample Answer
Addressing Public Health Priorities through Policy Interventions
Identifying Community Health Priorities
In my city or county, two top priorities that align with the health conditions identified in the HI-5 article are:
1. Obesity: Evidence of this issue can be observed through the proliferation of fast-food restaurants and limited access to fresh produce in low-income neighborhoods. Additionally, high rates of obesity-related health conditions such as diabetes and heart disease are prevalent in the community.
2. Substance Abuse: The opioid epidemic has had a significant impact in our community, leading to increased rates of addiction, overdose deaths, and related social issues such as homelessness and crime. Needle litter and drug paraphernalia can be found in public spaces, indicating the severity of the problem.
Proposal for Addressing Obesity
Proposal: Implement a city-wide policy mandating a sugar-sweetened beverage tax to reduce consumption of sugary drinks and fund community health programs promoting nutrition education and physical activity.
Health Impact Pyramid Analysis
According to the Health Impact Pyramid diagram in the HI-5 article, the proposed sugar-sweetened beverage tax falls under the “Changing the Context to Make Individuals’ Default Decisions Healthy” level of the pyramid. By altering the environment through taxation, individuals are nudged towards healthier choices, leading to population-level health improvements. This intervention addresses the root cause of obesity by targeting environmental factors that contribute to poor dietary habits.
