Page 36 - MJHP MALAYSIAN JOURNAL OF HEALTH PROMOTION Volume 2, 2020

MALAYSIAN JOURNAL OF HEALTH PROMOTION Volume 2, 2020

4.5 Health Promotion as Mediator
Accounting the listed SDH in this review, it is necessary to understand
the true scale of disproportionalities among EMGs before the
commencement of HP action. A range of efforts is vital to counteract the
apparent risk that COVID-19 will intensify existing health inequalities
which soon disproportionately affect EMGs. HP and SDH approaches,
when integrated, can better contribute to understanding and addressing
health inequities (Jackson et al., 2013) for example to the EMGs. Hence,
the HP profession plays a vital role in pandemics, and this has been
abundantly evident in the responses to COVID‐19 (Smith & Judd,
2020). As suggested by Burström and Tao (2020) a feasible HP approach
is to increase knowledge and awareness of the underlying mechanisms
of SDH.
Interventions should be informed and designed in collaboration
with the community to allow appropriate measures to be taken that
resonate with the needs of the communities. In addition, these measures
should be evaluated for their effectiveness (Burström & Tao, 2020). In
HP, there is a need for a realistic strategy to communicate important health
messages particularly for COVID-19 in a concise and meaningful way
that makes it easy and accessible for EMGs to understand, navigate and
take action. As such, planning and developing HP campaign that feasible
with EMGs by considering their SDH and their cognitive parameters
will most likely able to convey the messages effectively. Another point
is to ensure multi-layered strategies focusing on actionability that can be
implemented at multiple structural levels, ranging from governmental to
corporate and community levels (Beaunoyer et al., 2020).

5. CONCLUSIONS
Available data on EMGs disparities in COVID-19 and mortality are currently
limited, but expanding. The collection and dissemination of COVID-19
data by EMGs remain critically important to guide policy, health care,
prevention, and intervention efforts. Scientific studies that result in improved
understanding of COVID-19 may lead to more targeted and effective
community-based and health care system–based interventions. As suggested
in previous study, an ideal way of integrating HP and SDH possibly happens
when focus given to the stakeholders at individual, community and policy
levels to improve health and health equity especially among EMGs.

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