Question

• Read the article: The Social Determinants of Health: Coming of Age.
• On the basis of your reading, create a report, answering the following:
  • Define, understand, and discuss some of the major risk factors for health and health care disparities and why they are associated with poorer outcomes among some multicultural populations.
  • Discuss how social advantage and health advantage are transmitted across lifetimes and generations.
  • Describe the implications for health care policy in addressing health.
  • Discuss at least of two of the knowledge gaps presented in the reading. How would you reduce these challenges?

Answer 1

The social determinants of health means the conditions and environment factors affects life's quality. It is mainly influenced by 5 categories like Genetics, behaviour, environmental and physical influences, medical care and social factors. these five categories are interlinked to eachother.

The major complications for health care disparities:

1. Primarily educational attainment and income : According to U.S. data, the progress in health with enhancing social advantage is measured here by income overall and in ethnic groups . The drawback sitiuations are those with below poverty-level incomes or without high-school completion are typically experience the worst health, even those with intermediate income or education levels appear less healthy than the most affluent/educated people's health.

The people who have high or good income, education, or occupational grade could reflect relatively direct health benefits of having more economic resources like healthier nutrition, housing, or neighborhood conditions or less stress due to greater resources to face with everyday challenges, unmeasured socioeconomic factors, and related psychosocial or health behavioral factors , self-perceived social status. The persons who does not have these good conditions are facing worst health conditions.

2. ENVIRONMENT CONDITIONS:   It can influence health through their physical characteristics, such as air and water quality and also sensitive factors like toxin substances and exposures to paint, chemical toxin or  pest products in housing.The availability and quality of neighborhood services like schools, transportation, medical care, and employment resources that can also influence health.

3.Working conditions: The jobs requiring repetitive movements and high physical workload put workers at higher risk for musculoskeletal injuries and disorders, persons who are not active at their  jobs are at increased risk of obesity and chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease; physical conditions in the workplace such as inadequate ventilation, high noise levels, and hazardous chemical exposures can also harm health.

work-related benefits like  medical insurance, paid leave, schedule flexibility, workplace wellness programs, child- and elder-care resources and retirement benefits could also be important for health.

4.STRESS: Behaviour may also affect health more directly through situations involving stress; chronic stress related to experiences of racial/ethnic bias.Coping with daily challenges can be particularly stressful when one’s financial and social resources are limited.

Social and health advantage are transmitted across lifetimes and generations:

The health effects of early childhood experiences associated with family social disadvantage. According to research, early experiences affect children’s cognitive, behavioral, and physical development, which predicts health; and developmental differences have been associated with socioeconomically linked differences in children’s home environments like  differences in stimulation from parents/caregivers.

Children of some parents who doesnot pay attention makes them less healthy and have more limited educational opportunity , both of which reduces chances for high quality of health and advantages in sociey in adulthood.

Implications for health care policy in addressing health: Health care policy affects not only the cost citizens must pay for care, but also access to the quality of care, which can affects their overall health. The high cost of healthcare results in  an increasing pressure  on the income and also on state budgets.

Gaps in Knowledge about the Social Determinants of Health: The funding for research is also a problem. Most U.S. research funding enhances the  studies of single diseases rather than multiple diseases data , putting SDOH research at a disadvantage.

Ongoing descriptive research is needed to monitor changes over time both in the distributions of key upstream social factors like income, wealth, and education across groups defined by race/ethnicity, geography, and gender.These findings can indicates social and health drawbacks affects various groups and its progress toward enhancing the health and decreases its disparities.

We need more life-course research, including longitudinal studies to build public-use databases with comprehensive information on both social factors and health, collected over time frames long enough toideally multiple generation—for health consequences of early childhood experiences to manifest. The balance should maintain between the fundings provides for researching the adult diseases and in examinstion of children’s health problems and social advantage throughout  the life.

These challenges are reduced mainly by focusing on increasing the research funds to make research on multipile diseases and providing health care for all people without discrimination. Government also should make a group that can gather and collect new information time to time about all generations health history can make improvement in health of all people.