Topic 3: Socioeconomic and Environmental Determinants

Question 1

What are the social determinants of health?

Answer 1

• encompasses personal factors and community conditions that collectively enable or hinder access to health.
• Progress

Question 2

Explain SES and SEP

Answer 2

• Socioeconomic status (SES) = socioeconomic position (SEP) = describes an individual’s standing in a society based on individual and household income, education, gender, occupation, ethnicity and race, and other characteristics that exist within a broader cultural, social, political, and policy environment.

Question 3

What is health disparities?

Answer 3

“a type of difference in health that is closely linked with social or economic disadvantage” – CDC

Question 4

Explain health inequity

Answer 4

is seen as something on which it is possible to act and change its origins are the consequences of human actions in the first place through the social determinants of health.

Question 5

What are most governments around the globe aim to do with health inequity?

Answer 5

• Reducing health inequity is often the goal of most governments around the globe.
• Reducing health disparities does not mean reducing health status of the advantaged population, and would not be a global health gain.

Question 6

What is horizontal health equity?

Answer 6

• Is about ensuring that people in equivalent circumstances are treated the same.
o Equal access to health care for equal need, equal use of health care for equal need; equal heath care expenditure for equal need.

Question 7

Explain vertical equity

Answer 7

• Vertical equity is about treating individual’s (or communities) who are unequal differently, in a way that is seen to be commensurate with their relative disadvantage.

Question 8

Common trends of social patterns:

Answer 8

• Women
• Indigenous people
• Ethnic and religious minorities
• Rural area residents
• Those working in the informal sector
• Less educated and other marginalized groups, such as LGBT

Question 9

Explain “income and wealth” in relation to demonstrating social patterns of healthy:

Answer 9

• Generally strong positive association between wealth/income and health outcome or access to core services
• Differences are narrower where mortality is lower or access to services are higher
• Differences tend to lessen overtime
• Not universal
• Interconnected with effects of occupation and education.

Question 10

Explain “Education” in relation to demonstrating social patterns of healthy:

Answer 10

• Individuals and groups with high educational levels generally have better health than those with limited or no education
• Effect operates through ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ routes
• Intergenerational links” parents’ health and education affects their children.
• Malnutrition and disease affect children’s cognitive development and school performance.

Question 11

Explain “Minority Population” in relation to demonstrating social patterns of healthy:

Answer 11

• Indigenous health issue is global, and linked to marginalization and has its origins in European contacts and pressures
• Effect operates through ‘discrimination’, social powerlessness, poor housing and labor force outcomes
Behavior and cultural factors also do play a role, but the causal interplay is complex

Question 12

Explain “Gender, culture and identity” in relation to demonstrating social patterns of healthy:

Answer 12

• Cultural factors strong sex preference selective abortions (10 million in china and 5 million in India ‘missing girls’).
• Data on LGBT health is limited as health data collection incorporating sexual orientation and gender identity is very limited.

Question 13

Explain “Gender” in relation to demonstrating social patterns of healthy:

Answer 13

• Being born female is dangerous to your health” – E.M. Murphy
• Women face health concerns related to their diminished place in many societies.

Question 14

Givee an example of Gender (social patterns of health)

Answer 14

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• Examples: female infanticide, less food for female children, lower enrollment in school, violence against women
• Cultural factors strong sex preference sex selective abortions (10 million in china and 5 million in India ‘missing girls’).

Question 15

Explain financial fairness

Answer 15

• Substantial out-of-pocket costs for the poor.
• The relative costs of those health services is much greater for the poor, which raises equity issues.
• Benefit of public subsidies often received by better-off people.