Social Determinants Of Health Essay

1.0 Introduction
Beside genetic and life style, that are individual determinants of health, there are many other factors -known as social determinants of health- which are varying even for the people who are living in the same society. They are defined as “social, cultural, environmental, and political factors that can affect the health of individuals” (Rumbold & Dickson-Swift, 2012, p. 40). This assignment will discuss the influence of one of the social determents of health, accessing to health services on the health condition of a specific target group; refugees population in Australia. The Refugee Convention 1951 defines refugees as ‘‘persons outside their country of origin who are unable or unwilling to return because of a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality,

Based on World Health Organisation (WHO) report, difficulties in accessing to the health services are the most important factors of inequity in health (Clark et al., 2014). Although most countries are aware of the impact of these factors and try to decrease the gap between health statuses of different groups in their society, the inequity still exists (Rumbold & Dickson-Swift, 2012). Data from a cross-sectional study on African refugee’s health in Melbourne, Australia, indicates that 50% of participations had difficulties in accessing to health services with mentioning communication as the most important one (Neale, Ngeow, Skull & Biggs, 2007). There are also some evidence that proves the differences in health outcome for refugees and migrant population as a case in point, refugee workers in Australia are more likely to be hurt at work (Shaw, Dorling & Smith,