Social Determinants and Public Health Programmes

Question: Discuss about the Social Determinants and Public Health Programmes. Answer: Introduction: Carla is honest, hardworking, brave, sacrificing, consistent, confident and kind person. Carla maintained her honest relationship with her husband in his down period, even though he left her alone when she required his support more. She is very hardworking, as she never gave up doing job. She faced many obstacles while doing different jobs. Still, she searched new jobs at each time and earned living for herself and her children. Carla is brave because she never left fighting spirit. Carla is very kind to each and every individual she comes across. She accepted each individuals negative characters and behaved positively with each and every person. Carla is ready to sacrifice her personal happiness for the family members. She left eating proper food to save money for the purpose of visiting her daughter. Carla is consistent in her efforts to take her of her family members. Carla is confident because she took care of family on her own. Overall, Carla has all the positive characters. Car las husband is dishonest, opportunistic, introvert and fearful. Carlas husband is dishonest in his relations. He performed his duties for the family, when it suited for him. He didnt take extra efforts to look after his family. He is introvert and didnt open to anybody about his injury. He is fearful because he didnt open to about his injury in the fear of losing his job (Gehlert and Browne, 2011). Social Determinants of Health: Personal, social, economic and environmental factors which affect health of the individual person are called health determinants. In this case study, mainly three social determinants like social factors, individual behavior and biology affects health of different individual in this case study. Carla couldnt get proper education because her family was not educated. Hence, she couldnt get job in the higher position. As, a result she was doing temporary jobs to meet the daily needs of her family. Build environment of the working place for her husband gave him head injury. Build environment is one of the physical components of social factor. Due to this factor, her husband got serious head injury and depression. Public transport is also one of the physical factors responsible for health related issues. Due to high cost of the public transport, Carla couldnt visit her daughter and take care of her. This might lead to further detoriation of health of her daughter. Moreover, as she is pregn ant, it can affect health of infant also (Marmot and Wilkinson, 2005; Toba et al., 2011). As, Carla and her husband were not educated, they couldnt provide proper education to their children. Hence, their socio-economic status of living was low. People living in the low socio-economic level are low in functioning and quality of life. These people are not aware of the importance of hygiene and good health. As these people need to work, despite poor health to earn daily living for the family. It can lead to the further detoriation of the health. Carlas husband also didnt stopped working despite head injury and it resulted in the serious problem for himself and his family also. It is evident from the literature that, people with low socioeconomic status are low in health status. Individual behavior is another social determinant affecting health in this case study. Carlas husband detoriated his health due to his personal behavior like introvert nature. He didnt report his injury due to fear of losing health and resulted in the serious problem. Daughter of Carla was facing health issues due to biological reasons. She is facing gestational diabetes problem. Gestational diabetes is very common problem in the pregnant women and these women should control it otherwise it can affect health of both mother and baby. In this case, Carlas daughter was feeling tired due gestational diabetes and seek help from Carla (Braveman and Gottlieb, 2014; Cowling et al., 2014). Two Strategies to Address the Issue: Social factors of the health determinant should be addressed by the population which gets affected. Individuals of this population should identify the factors affecting their health and try to address on their own, with family members, community workers and social workers. Policy makers, legislators and officials from health department should identify issues and educate the population. They should address these issues through meetings with people and through workshops. Respected figures and well-known personalities of the society should come forward and address these issues. Because these people have good influence on all types people in the society People should be skilled enough to keep away from the unhealthy environment. This knowledge and skills can be developed in the people through community development programmes. There should be communication between the high and low socioeconomic class people. It would help to transfer awareness about the healthy life. Health related issues generally occur due to the multiple factors, hence these issues should be addressed by experts and workers from the different discipline. These collaborative efforts would bring positive changes in the multiple sectors and there would be overall improvement in the health of the whole population. Government and Non-Government organizations should come forward to improve health awareness among the people (WHO, 2010; Raphael, 2014). Addressing upstream social determinants of health : There should be knowledge about the building so that it would not affect health of the people. People should form self-help group for cleanliness of the environment, maintain hygiene, adequate food and supply of good water. Policies required for the improvement in the community health and development should be implemented effectively. Barriers for accessing health facilities should be improved. There should be equal distribution about the health care education among all classes of people. There should be preventive measures taken from the health department to prevent communicable diseases. Education should be provided to protect people from hazards in the workplace and society (Tengland, 2012; Cowling et al., 2014). Healthcare professional should give education to the people about maintaining hygiene condition and healthy food. Healthcare professional also should work towards the community safety. Healthcare professional should work towards the easy availability and accessibility of medicine to the all classes of people. Health professional also should advise community people to do exercise for healthy living. Healthcare professionals should carry out survey about the community health issues and implement strategies to address these issues. Healthcare professionals should guide the policy makers about the policies to be implemented for the improvement in the social and community health services. Healthcare professionals should advocate pro-health policies like maintenance policies, education policies, employment policies, compensation policies and tax policies. Healthcare professionals should use audio and video media effectively to address the health issues and make aware people about healthy l iving. There should be incorporation of social determinants in the medical curricula. It should comprises of population and community health coursework along with the clinical science. Healthcare professionals should address social determinants of health at both individual and population level. Healthcare professionals should collaborate with other allied health professionals, government agencies, community workers and social workers. Every hospital should designate a specialist person to address the social determinants of the health (Schofield, 2015). References: Braveman, P., and Gottlieb, L. (2014). The Social Determinants of Health: It's Time to Consider the Causes of the Causes. Public Health Reports, 129(2), 1931. Cowling, K., Dandona, R., and Dandona, L., (2014). Social determinants of health in India: progress and inequities across states. International Journal for Equity in Health, 13, p. 88. Marmot, M. and Wilkinson, R. (2005). Social Determinants of Health. OUP Oxford. Gehlert, S., and Browne, T. (2011). Handbook of Health Social Work. John Wiley Sons. Raphael, D. (2014). Beyond policy analysis: The raw politics behind opposition to healthy public policy. Health Promotion International, 30, 38096. Schofield, T., (2015). 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