Social Determinant of Health

Social Determinant of Health

Social factors are regarded as vital elements affecting health leaders as goals in healthcare are going towards value-based strategies that are incenting positive outcomes instead of personal procedures and treatments. Social determinants are mainly the problematic circumstances that persons are born in that impact their health. Some of these social factors include political, unreachable education and hospitals, social-economic, insecure environment, cultural regimes, and unhealthy food (Adler et al., 2016). Correspondingly, social factors may be defined as those conditions that a person is born with, raised, and live till they die. Naturally, money, resources, and power mostly seem to shape these situations.

Social determinants are associated with economic gaps and societal stratification.  In healthcare today, it is evident that social factors cause many dilemmas. Such dilemmas include heart diseases, cancer, obesity, and depression, which affect people worldwide. Additionally, some feedbacks loops and interactions are involved, which exist in these determinants (Artiga & Hinton, 2019). For example, deprived education affects job opportunities connected with low income. On the other hand, low income affects an individual’s accessibility to healthcare and nutrition, which in turn leads to more problems. Low income is also related to additional stress that brings unhealthy living, such as drug abuse and unhealthy food, which deteriorates health further.

Another topic of interest is infectious diseases. Thus, it is essential to know the main idea of the transmittable disease chain model. Typically, the notion behind the model is to expound how infectious diseases are spread from one person to another. Likewise, it also validates the break or reduction of infection. Therefore, the chain is used to make people aware that they are capable of not spreading diseases.

Outstandingly, the best approach to evade the spread of infections is to interfere with the chains. An excellent example that nurses can use to break the chain is through following the required steps. They should as well make sure that the hands are clean always when undertaking their duties in a healthcare facility. Nurses should cover themselves when sneezing or coughing and maybe take sick leave. The healthcare facility should be cleaned and disinfected, and staff should wear protective gear, sterilize them, and use antibiotics (Serra et al., 2019). Generally, proper hygiene is vital not only by nurses but to all persons.

References

Adler, N. E., Cutler, D. M., Jonathan, J. E., Galea, S., Glymour, M., Koh, H. K., & Satcher, D. (2016). Addressing social determinants of health and health disparities. National Academy of Medicine, 1-16.

Artiga, S., & Hinton, E. (2019). Beyond health care: the role of social determinants in promoting health and health equity. Health, 20, 10.

Serra, C., Soler-Font, M., García, A. M., Peña, P., Vargas-Prada, S., & Ramada, J. M. (2019). Prevention and management of musculoskeletal pain in nursing staff by a multifaceted intervention in the workplace: design of a cluster randomized controlled trial with effectiveness, process, and economic evaluation (INTEVAL_Spain). BMC public health, 19(1), 348