Health Studies
Determinants of Health
Social Determinants of Health
Social gradient: This determinant of health suggests that health status of individuals is inked to their placing along the social ladder- lower, middle or upper class.
Unemployment: This determinant of health suggests that the psychological, financial and social consequences that arise from not being employed are damaging to one's health.
Early Life: This determinant of health suggests that the health of the mother during pregnancy, presence of complications during birth and the quality of the child's first years of life will heavily impact the wellbeing of the child's health later in life.
Social Exclusion: This determinant of health suggests that the more social excluded an individual is from society, can lead to a variety of personal issues in their community.
Work: This determinant of health suggests that working (either paid or voluntary) is good for health.
Stress: This determinant of health suggests that individual's living in stressful circumstances for long periods of time live in a constant state of "flight or fight".
Addiction: This determinant of health suggests that people will turn to drugs and alcohol to scape their unhappy lives, possibly due to other social determinants of health
Food: This determinant of health suggests that a healthy, nutritious, balanced diet is essential for growth, development and vitality.
Transport: This determinant of health suggests a choice of transport can also act as a source of exercise such as walking, cycling or skating.
Social Support: This social determinant of health suggests people with positive, rewarding, close relationships will have better health status and will live longer than those who don't.
Culture: This determinant of health suggests the cultural group an individual belongs to has an impact on their health behaviours as cultural expectations will influence decisions.
Environmental Determinants of Health
Natural Environment is all organisms, elements and landscapes found on the Earth's surface.
Food and Water Quality: Refers to the concern of viruses and bacteria being present in the food or water which are dangerous to one's health.
Vector Agents: An organism that transmits diseases, parasites or infection from one host to another.
Ultraviolet Radiation: The high-energy rays most commonly coming from sunlight. Due to the depletion of the Ozone layer from human activity, we are less protected from UV.
Outdoor Air Quality: Refers to the quality of the air outside, This has deteriorated due to air pollution which is harmful to health.
Built Environment: refers to aspects of our surroundings which are created or modified by people, rather than occurring naturally
Indoor Air Quality: Refers to the continents in the air inside of buildings which can be detrimental to our health and cause conditions such as asthma or cancer.
Walkability: Refers to how conductive an area is for walking which can influence health behaviours and encourage (or discourage) physical activity.
Transport: Is the physical infrastructure, vehicles and operations that provide for the movement of people and goods from one location to another.
Green Space: Is an area of open land within or next to an urban area like parks which can be used for leisure activities and increase exercise.
Environmental Noise: Unwanted sound that may cause annoyance, disturb communication or interfere with sleep and mental tasks.
Extreme Weather: Refers to extreme weather events such as violent storms that cause harm to local populations and reduce the ability for the population to maintain social determinants of health.
Socio- Economic Determinants of Health
Housing: Can impact health in many ways such as overcrowding, poor housing condition and hazards in or around the home. This can impact the health of the residents and at time the surrounding neighbours.
Education: Suggests that those with more education have less chronic health problems and longer life expectancies and can influence health behaviours.
Anything external that acts on the body that can be linked to change in health.
Economic and social conditions that influence differences in health status.
An individual's access to money which can be in or out of their control (wealth and economic status).
Employment: Being employed is better for health than not being employed because it allows access to income and social status, which are beneficial for health outcomes.
Housing: Poor housing conditions and overcrowding have been linked to infections, disease and other illnesses.
Income: Is positively linked to health but having a higher income doesn't always mean better health; too much money can reduce health due to excessive diet and access to drugs and alcohol.
Access to Services: This determinant of health suggests that health services can prevent ill health from occurring and can reduce the burden of disease in a community.
Neighbourhood: This determinant of health suggests that the neighbourhood and communities an individual lives in has a huge impact on health.
Family: Wealth of an individual's immediate and extended family can impact on socio-economic status.
Migration/Refugee Status: Those who migrate to another place can have an impact on health as the location individuals have migrated to may or may not provide effective and culturally sensitive social services.
Food Security: Refers to the stability of available food within a population. It can be the physical presence of food or the cost to afford to buy food.
Biomedical Determinants of Health
An individual's genetic and biological makeup an their health and safety practices.
Body weight
Suggests excess body fat has increased the risk of developing a range of health problems like cardiovascular disease.
Individuals who are severely underweight are associated with malnutrition and poor health.
Some people- based on genetic and biological factors- may be more likely to gain weight or lose weight than others.
Birth Weight
Suggests that low birth weight is more detrimental than high birth weight in the longer term.
Studies show that low birth weight babies have lower risk of surviving the first years of life and are prone to ill-health throughout childhood.
Health Charters and Promoters
Ottawa Charter of Health Promotion
Pre-requisites for health are:
- Peace
- Shelter
- Education
- Food
- Income
- A stable eco-system
- Sustainable resources
- Social justice, and equality
The Ottawa Charter of Health Promotion sets out five action areas to guide implementation and effective health promotion to enable, mediate and advocate health.
Health promotion: The process of helping people to increase control over, and improve their health.
Enable: To make possible by empowering or helping, to give strength to or aid with the ability to complete tasks.
Mediate: Act between people to help solve problems and to bring about a resolution.
Advocate: To recommend or plead for a cause.
Ottawa Charter Action Areas:
Build Healthy Public Policy
Create Supportive Environments
Strengthen Community Action
Develop Personal Skills
Reorient Health Services
A guide to plan health promotion efforts to improve control over and increase health.
Framework for Health Promotion
- Individual
- Groups
- Populations
- Education
- Motivatiobnal
- Organisational
- Economic
- Regulatory
- Technological
Behavioural adaptations
Environmental adaptations
Better health
Quality of life
Outcomes
Health Belief Model
Aim: Used in health promotion to motivate people to participate in interventions and prevention programs.
Focus: Assesses the health behaviour of individuals through examination of perceptions and attitudes they may have towards a disease and negative outcomes of certain actions.
Stages in the Health Belief Model:
1. Perceived threat: how an individual thinks about a disease.
2. Perceived susceptibility: the risk an individual has to a disease.
3. Perceived severity: how serious the disease can be.
4. Outcome expectations: what the individual expects to happen if individual participates in the intervention.
5. Perceived benefits: benefits for participating in the intervention.
6. Perceived barriers: reasons the individual cannot participate in the intervention.
7. Self efficiency: individuals belief they can carry out an action.
Prevention Strategies
Activities that target a specific population or the larger community that are designed to be implemented before the onset of problems as a means to prevent substance abuse or the detrimental effects from occurring.
Strategies include:
- Screening
- Immunisations
- Health education
There are three levels of disease prevention that health promoter, community development workers and health professionals use to avoid, minimise and manage injury and disease.
Three Levels of Prevention:
- Primary prevention- before the illness or disease even occurs.
- Secondary prevention- early detection.
- Tertiary prevention- to improve quality of life with the illness or disease.
Health Literacy, Products and Services
Impact
Strategies
Focus
Health Literacy: The ability for individuals to access, read and comprehend health information and to use this information to make informed, wise decisions.
Critical Literacy: The ability to synthesise health information and technology with discernment and judgement.
Skills for Health Literacy:
The ability to access, read and comprehend health information.
Accessing: The ability to obtain, retrieve and locate the information you need.
Reading: The ability to be able to read the health information you have accessed.
Comprehending: The ability to grasp the health information and put it into practice.
Disease Management is an approach to healthcare that teaches patients how to manage a chronic disease.
Principles of Disease Management:
- Care planning
- Self- monitoring
- Self- administered treatment
- Allied health professionals
- Emergency contact
- Review
Health Products and Services can be influenced through:
- Media
- Transport
- Cost
- Consumer confidence
-Product placement
Beliefs, Attitudes and Values
Attitude: The negative or positive feelings an individual attaches to an object, to people or to situations.
Value: The general principles by which an individual lives their life by that are not specific to an object or situation. They are the moral standards an individual draws upon to make decisions.
Formation of Beliefs
Self- Generated
Experience: People can develop beliefs due to an experience they have had.
Reflection: The internal processing of a concept to work out what an individual truely believes.
Belief: A person's sense of right and wrong.
Externally Generated
Experts: Researching literature, seeking information and advice from highly-qualified people.
Authority: Some positions of leadership bring with them power that people will believe what they say because of the title they hold.
Formation of Values
- Can be acquired as a result of being part of a religious or ethnic group.
- Can develop a set of basic or core values as young people and then base the rest of their values around this set.
- Generally based on culture, ethnicity, demographics and other factors such as peers.
Formation of Attitudes
The cognitive component: thoughts and beliefs people hold.
The affective component: emotional feeling
The behavioural component: predispositions to act a certain way.
Influences of the Media, Advertising and Marketing- The media aims to change people's beliefs with the hope it will influence their attitude or behaviour towards a product.
- If you have a positive attitude towards something then you may intend to do or buy it.
- They also aim to influence normative beliefs, which will then affect the subjective norm.
Interrelationship Between Beliefs, Attitudes and Values
- When a person has several beliefs that all relate to an object or situation and cause the individual to become prone to action, they become attitudes.
- They can also become values as they can be used to evaluate, compare and judge.
- Beliefs are translated into attitudes through values.