Legal And Ethical Issues In Health Care

As a graduate student pursing a Masters in Healthcare administration, I have acquires knowledge about health care law, ethics, and policy in healthcare administration. As a final project, I decided research the use of tobacco in the community of DeKalb County. After researching, I learned that in the United States the use of tobacco is the leading preventable cause of death (CDC, 2014). In addition, over eight million people in the United States have smoking-related chronic illnesses and over 400,000 people in the United States die each year from cigarette smoking and exposure to tobacco smoke (CDC, 2014). President Obama signed a historic bill to protect the public health by providing the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the authority to regulate manufacturing, marketing and sale of tobacco products in 2009 (CNN, 2009). …show more content…
The schools in my community have a smoke-free month and the children learn about smoking and the risks. Educating youth and adults about the effects that tobacco can do to the human body and information about tobacco companies could help many communities.
According to the CDC (2015), smoke-free environments are the most effective way to reduce exposure to secondhand smoke. If tobacco use in the United States continues it could cause more than 10 million deaths annually by 2020 (NOLO, 2015). I would also implement more smoke-free environments for businesses. For example, at my previous employer, they did not have a smoke free environment, which meant employees would smoke outside the building that caused a bad environment and increased second hand