What really determines how healthy an individual is? Health is not really just something you are blessed with. Many factors determine how healthy an individual will be. It can be from childbirth, to the time of death, old age. If we take a look at some of the factors determining health it can really help us understand how these things can really provide us with either very positive influences or negative influences. The first basic factor is personal health practices and coping skills. For example, Smoking is a personal health practice and very often people use it as a coping skill. There has been studies done on parents who smoke and the results are that if you’ve had one or more parents who smokes, you’re ninety percent likely to smoke than someone whose parents didn’t smoke. Income, social status, social support networks, do you have people around you who support you? We know that all of those things can really help a person when they’re feeling very helpless or hopeless – if you’ve got support networks around you that can really be there for you, what are your employment and working conditions? Do you work in an environment that there’s high-risk? Do you work in an employment area where there is lots of opportunities for what we call post-traumatic stress? Ambulance, police fire, the physical environment are you working in an area where you’re dealing with variations in temperature like if you’re a roofer or you’re somebody who works outside, education the higher the education, generally speaking, the lower the obesity rates, healthy child development. Genetics is a key individual factor that determines health. A history of poor health in the family makes a person more susceptible to disease or illness.
Social-cultural factors are family, peers, media, religion and culture. Much of the social cultural factors are rooted in your family heritage. Your parents and siblings will have a huge impact on your choice of religion your culture and sometimes what media you can see. Peers create an environment around you that will also influence your health choices. It will not be like telling you directly what to do but simply by you following the flow of crowd and wanting to fit in. Marketing campaigns and other information shared across the media will also influence your health and help shape both your perception of health and your actions relating to it. Finally a sense of connectivity or belonging can greatly influence your health. People who belong to religious groups or a culture with strong social ties help to increase health outcomes due to increased self-worth and social health.
Socio-economic patterns include employment, education and income. Each of these relate to the other but basically if you have higher levels of education, you have greater personal knowledge and skills to use in relation to health choices. If you have a job in Sport and Recreation, you are more likely to have good health compared to those who work in high-risk jobs such as truck driving or mining higher levels of income will also affect your access to health related products and services and can influence other activities as well. For example, a poor teenager may not be able to afford to go to the movie with their friends leave them socially isolated and feeling alone.
Geographical location access to health services and Technology are environmental factors that affects your health. If you live in a place that has little access to fresh food, people your own age or health services such as in rural Australia, you are more likely to have poorer health. However if you have proper access to these services, you can be treated more easily and can recover faster from accidents. Access to health information that is up-to-date and accurate provided you know how to critique information also help in understanding health. Each of the determinants has various factors that overlap and affect other determinants. For example a person who has a higher level of education and a high paying job can afford to live in a nicer house in a nice area with access to cafes and the beach. This person will also have a larger knowledge base around health and a good skill set to make healthy choices but of course they could have terrible genetics inherited from parents.
