Wk2 Major Determinants of Health

Question 1

How does Marx define health?

Answer 1

The capacity to do productive work

Question 2

How does Parsons define health?

Answer 2

(Sociologically) a state of optimum capacity for the effective performance of valued tasks

Question 3

How does WHO define health?

Answer 3

A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity

Question 4

What are the pros of the WHO definition?

Answer 4

• Emphasis on all three facets

- Positive dimensions of health (not just absence of disease or illness)

Question 5

What are the cons of the WHO definition?

Answer 5

• Is it well-being = good health?

- Utopian

Question 6

What are the different dimensions to health?

Answer 6

• Disease
• Disability
• Frequency of illness
• Malaise
• Fitness

Question 7

How does biology determine health?

Answer 7

• Age (younger less likely to die) - more people in elderly age bracket
• Sex (females are less likely to die)
• Genetic

Question 8

How many babies born today will live to 100?

Answer 8

1 in 3/4

Question 9

How does lifestyle determine health?

Answer 9

• Tobacco : kills up to half its users, 6m per year rising to 8m by 2030. 5m are smokers/ex-smokers and >600k are nonsmokers exposed to second-hand smoke. An average of one death every 6 seconds. 100m in 20th century and 1b in 21st if actions not taken.
• Nutrition - malnutrition causes childhood deaths in third world, over-nutrition (obesity, diabetes etc.)
• Alcohol
• Physical activity
• ‘Risky’ behaviours

Question 10

How does environment determine health?

Answer 10

Physico-chemical
- Air
- Water
- Radiation
Biological
- Microbes (COVID, radiation etc.)
Socioeconomic and sociopolitical 
- Social cohesion and inequality - homelessness
- Employment 
- Education
- Political stability
- Over-abundance and 'convenience society'

Question 11

Is obesity an individual choice?

Answer 11

• Rise in childhood obesity affects children from more deprived families disproportionately
• Peoples with less money and time to prepare food are more likely to choose cheap, easily prepared food
• The availability of cheap junk food high in sugar affect disadvantaged children more
• Other factors - access to safe spaces for outdoor play and exercise

Question 12

How does health service determine health?

Answer 12

• Decrease in mortality in the last 2 centuries mainly due to fall in infectious disease (vaccinations etc.)
• Clinical medicine played a smaller role than other changes (nutrition, hygiene, reproductive behaviour)
• TB - chemotherapy hastened decrease
• Polio, smallpox, diphtheria - immunisation brought large decrease
• Whooping cough, measles - decrease had little to do with immunisation
• Clinical medicine - prevents death (acute emergencies and infectious diseases that may respond to antimicrobial therapy/many important causes of death are less amenable to treatment), improves length and quality of survival in fatal conditions, improves quality of life in nonfatal conditions, preventing and treating genetic disorders, care (chronically mentally ill, mentally disabled, elderly)