SDOH

So what are the Social Determinants of Health (SDOH)? The following is a list from the Canadian Government’s Public Health Agency of Canada[1] who are very active in promoting research into community health care.

1. Income and Social Status

2. Social Support Networks

3. Education and Literacy

4. Employment/Working Conditions

5. Social Environments

6. Physical Environments

7. Personal Health Practices and Coping Skills

8. Healthy Child Development

9. Biology and Genetic Endowment

10. Health Services

11. Gender

12. Culture

These determinants have a profound effect on a person’s health in that the more positive any of these determinants are for you, the more healthy you probably are. The two most powerful underlying meta-determinants of health are social status and income. These two factors alone outweigh the other determinants. A recent study by the Public Health Agency of Canada[2] supports the growing international understanding of the importance of these determinants regarding a healthy population.

A wealth of evidence from Canada and other countries supports the notion that the socioeconomic circumstances of individuals and groups are equally or more important to health status than medical care and personal health behaviours, such as smoking and eating patterns (Evans et al., 1994; Frank, 1995; Federal/Provincial/Territorial Advisory Committee on Population Health, 1999). The weight of the evidence suggests that the SDOH have a direct impact on the health of individuals and populations, are the best predictors of individual and population health, structure lifestyle choices, and interact with each other to produce health (Raphael, 2003). In terms of the health of populations, it is well known that disparities-the size of the gap or inequality in social and economic status between groups within a given population-greatly affect the health status of the whole. The larger the gap, the lower the health status of the overall population (Wilkinson, 1996; Wilkinson and Marmot, 1998).

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[1]http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/about_apropos/index.html

[2]The Social Determinants of Health:
An Overview of the Implications for Policy and the Role of the Health Sector, The Public Health Agency of Canada