So many factors can have an impact on an individual’s or a population’s health. These factors are known as determinants of health. Determinants of health are considered a range of behavioral, biological, socioeconomic, and environmental factors that can influence the health status of individuals and populations. Some examples of this include but are not limited to; education, employment status, occupation, income, financial resources, housing, crime, access to care, nutrition, services, race, age, and sex. Determinates create vulnerable and marginalized populations.
Unfortunately, these health determinants have a deep-rooted history and continue to be seen throughout our society today. Health determinants can be traced back to the 19th century as a response to the Industrial Revolution when society saw a large increase in disease and poverty. This forced scientists to look at disease from not only a biological realm but from a social realm as well. This eventually lead the World Health Organization or include social influence into their definition of good health. They defined health as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being.” Also, during this time as the cold war was beginning and politics began to play a role in health care as well. Due to this we began to see culture began to play a role in social determinates as many people began to handle healthcare needs on a community-based level. As this community level-based care began to be seen, economic status also began to play a role in determining many health determinants. Some modern examples of these things include low income communities not being able to afford some health care such as transportation to health care or healthy food options due to economic status. Politics determine different health care options for some individuals such as the covid-19 vaccine or abortions rules. Different cultures have differing views on different health care procedures such as wearing hospital gowns and who they wish to disclose their health information to. All of these aspects that make up the social determinants create some very vulnerable populations and marginalization throughout our health care.
I feel like as a future nurse it is part of my job to try and bring light to these disparities by identifying them throughout my practice and try to instill practices that can help improve them. I know that these small changes can start with me so I think that the number one thing I can do is to try and learn of these problems and identify them on the spot during my practice. Once I have identified a problem, I can then help my current patient but also try and get practices created in my facility and community to prevent the next patient from going through the same problems. An example of this step-by-step process to make greater change would be a non-primarily English-speaking community member trying to call and set up an appointment, but they can’t because there is no other language options on the automated scheduling line. This patient also could not reach any other indivisibles get an appointment and then they do not get the care they need. By identifying this problem when my patient comes to visit and tells me about this, I could go to my team and work with the hospital to get the message system changes/ updated. This would prevent other community members from having the same problem and help to try and limit some of the health disparities seen throughout our society. I believe that by taking into account this information and everything I have learned about public health and the health disparities that exist within our community I will be able to try and put a stop to it.
