As a public health planner, you must have a thorough understanding of social
determinants of health (SDOH) to address local health issues and recommend
possible solutions.
Watch the following video as you prepare to respond to the discussion prompts:
Understand How Social Determinants of Health Impact Outcomes
Video with transcript
Now, research social determinants of health (SDOH).
Respond to the following:
After reviewing the SDOH list, choose 2 different SDOH and explain how you
would describe each to a friend.
What does the SDOH mean in public health?
Provide a specific example for at least 2 SDOHs and explain how they
impacted the health concerns of a local community.
Social determinants of health (SDOH) are the conditions in the environments where
people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age that affect a wide range of health,
functioning, and quality-of-life outcomes and risks. These factors have a huge contribution
towards health inequalities and well-being of different populations. When describing the
SDOH’s to a friend I would begin with two factors that are income and economic stability,
and education. The level of income will most probably dictate the lifestyle an individual will
be living in terms of living a satisfying, healthy, and fulfilling life. The activities that are
based on being able to meet the expense of basic products such as a house, food, and can
easily access healthcare services. When an individual is unable to afford these basic needs it
prompts them to being in a state of distress, and living a low quality of life which will not be
good for their general health (Walter, Schoenfeld, Smith, Shufflebarger, Khoury, Baldwin,
& Hess, 2021). Education is not just a process of gaining knowledge, skills, and prospects
but also acts as a root path to an individual’s base of life. In public health, the SDOH are
important because health outcomes are not solely dependent on behaviour of an individual’s
access to healthcare.
There are also other factors that will determine the health of an individual for
instance the larger societal effects and the environment. For instance, in a society that is
considered as low income, the population is likely to undergo challenges that arise from
unemployment and earning a low percentage of income. This will associate them with the
lack of proper or no shelter, having a poor diet as far as food is concerned as they will only
eat to live and no access to health services, for this reason the population will be subjected
to live in an unhealthy life where they are prone to mental or physical distress based from
the financial challenge (Chaturvedi, Zhu, Vaishnavi Gadela, Prabhakaran, & Jafar, 2023).
From the education perspective, for example, when considering a society that has most of its
population with no access to education and face a low chance of getting the opportunities
that arise from having the needed education. With such a society, the health care implication
will be heavy on the professional as they will have poor understanding of healthcare
language.
Reference
Chaturvedi, A., Zhu, A., Vaishnavi Gadela, N., Prabhakaran, D., & Jafar, T. H. (2023).
Social Determinants of Health and Disparities in Hypertension and Cardiovascular
Diseases. Hypertension.
Walter, L. A., Schoenfeld, E. M., Smith, C. H., Shufflebarger, E., Khoury, C., Baldwin,
K., ... & Hess, E. P. (2021). Emergency department–based interventions affecting
social determinants of health in the United States: a scoping review. Academic
Emergency Medicine, 28(6), 666-674.
