Determinant Of Health Essay

850 Words2 Pages

HCA 500 Determinant in Health Care By Helenelizabeth Mbongalang Stratford University Instructor Dr Zelalem 1/18/2014 INTRODUCTION I will start by defining the word health, in the US content, Parsons (1972) “A state of physical and mental well being that facilitates the achievements of individual and societal goal” WHO (1948) “A complete state of physical, mental well being, and not merely the absence of disease or infinity” WHO also defines Health Care system “As all of the activities aim at promoting, restoring or maintaining health” Many factors combine together to affect the health of individuals and communities. Whether people are healthy or not, is determined by their circumstances and environment. To a large extent, factors such as where we live, the state of our environment, genetics, our income and education level, and our relationships with friends and family all have considerable impacts on health, whereas the more commonly considered factors such as access and use of health care services often have less of an impact. The context of people’s lives determines their health, and so blaming individuals for having poor health or crediting them for good health is inappropriate. Individuals are unlikely to be able to directly control many of the determinants of health. DETERMINANT OF HEALTH The four determinant of health is environment, behavior and life style, hereditary, and medical care. Physical environment. Examples: where a person lives and crowding conditions Individual behavior. Examples: alcohol use, injection drug use (needles), unprotected sex, and smoking Biology and genetics. Examples: sex and age Social environment. Examples: discrimination, income, and gender Health services. Examples: Access to qua... ... middle of paper ... ...ical imperative. Social injustice is killing people on a grand scale." -excerpt from the 2008 World Health Organization Commission on Social Determinant CONCLUSSION The range of personal, social, economic, and environmental factors that influence health status are known as determinants of health. The U.S. government has used multiple programs, like work and environmental safety effort, community base partnership, culturally appropriate care, patient safety/medical safety error reduction, prevention oriented effort, coordinated care for chronically ill persons, and also healthy people 2010 and 2020 to improve the health of the population. References 1. Wealth Health Organization (2008) “Healthy People 2020” 2. Shi &Singh (2013)”Essence of the U.S. Health Care System” 3. Retrieved from web page, http://www.cdc.gov/socialdeterminants/Definitions.html

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