Policy in Relation with Health of Citizens

Abstract

Policy is a key factor of development and demolition of a particular country, especially Kosovo as a new country in the region. Studies showed that there is a link between economic policy, inequality and health of the population. One of the biggest surprises in the literature and studies in Europe and America is that there are few studies on policy variables and their impact on health and income. Health is the main factor, affecting the social and the welfare, also lack of health come as a result of political factors (Vincent Navarro, 2008). Rudolf Virchow stated that "Medicine is a social science while politic is nothing except the high-level medicine". The biggest development in the political field, were done by avoiding affects, welfare and directly affects health of citizens (Navarro V., 2000). Recently there were too many changes in governments confusing population so we wanted to study the current policy and to clarify if policy is a factor that affects health. Participants in this research were 86 citizens (64 percent males) in five cities of Kosovo chosen systematically sample. We used four questionnaires: Self-created questionnaires to measure the current state of the political based on two other questionnaires, we used Ault Hope Scale (AHS) (Snyder C. R., et. Al., 1991) to measure hope, Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-DS) (Radloff,, 1977) to measure situation of current depression in general population and The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SwLS) (Diener et al., 1985) to measure satisfaction. (Data were analyzed using the statistical Package for social science (SPSS, 22). Results show that citizens are disappointed by the current political situation in Kosovo (72.5 percent). Also 73.2 percent of the respondents accepted that they are too agitated to recent political events, which consequently follows that 47.2 percent of them have been depressed. These studies show that political situation is an indicator factor in health and wellbeing of citizens directly, or indirectly by increasing the scale of depression and anxiety. Policy is the main discussion topic in society and also in family so there is plenty of space to study the current policy and the effects on social wellbeing.