Lately, I have heard a lot about “social determinants of health”, but I have vaguely glanced over the idea. Today, I want to explore this more in-depth and give you an overview.
Although you can find a discussion about this topic in lots of places, the information I am presenting here comes from the website healthypeople.gov and the Healthy People 2020 program. They define social determinants of health as “conditions in the environments in which 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.” Some examples of social determinants include access to educational opportunities, access to job opportunities, quality of education, transportation options, public safety, social support, exposure to crime, access to mass media, and culture. Healthy People 2020’s approach to social determinants of health is focusing on five key areas: economic stability, education, social and community context, health and health care, and neighborhood and built environment.
I am happy to see that many organizations, including the U.S. government, is really starting to address these factors, because I think they absolutely have a role in our overall health. We need to start looking at not only the entire person, but the larger context in which the person lives their life. I am looking forward to what we find out and how we can address the problems that are identified (problems that I suspect a lot of us already have an idea about). Specifically, when looking at this and depression, I think we might find even more potential factors that lead to depression.
How about you? Have you heard about social determinants of health before? Do you think these are important to our health? I hope you agree that this is another great way to look at a bigger picture of our health.