Space and Global Health/Equity in Health Care/SDH and Health Inequity
Social Determinants of Health and Health Inequity[edit | edit source]
There is ample evidence that social factors, including education, employment and financial protection, environment, living conditions (housing, basic amenities), poverty, gender inequality, social inclusion and non-discrimination, structural conflict, nutritional status and ethnicity have a marked influence on how healthy an individual is, how health equity is affected both in positive and negative ways.[1] All countries – whether low-, middle- or high-income – there are wide disparities within the health status of various social groups. The lower an individual's socio-economic position, the upper their risk of poor health.
Let's take a glance at some examples.[edit | edit source]
- There is a difference of 18 years of life expectancy between high- and low- income countries.[2]
- 85% of premature deaths cause of noncommunicable diseases occur in low- and middle-income countries.[3]
- The children under 5 years old are 14 times more likely to die in Africa than the rest of the globe.[4]
- Maternal mortality is a key indicator of health inequity - developing countries account for 99% of annual maternal deaths within the world. Women in Chad have a lifetime risk of maternal death of 1 in 16, while a girl in Sweden features a risk of but 1 in 10000.
- Tuberculosis is a disease of poverty- around 95% of TB deaths are within the developing world.
- There are alarming health inequities within countries, too- within America, African Americans represent only about 13% of the population but account for nearly half of all new HIV infections.
- Health inequities have a big financial cost to societies- the losses linked to health inequities cost around 1.4% of gross domestic product (GDP) within the European Union – a figure almost as high as the EU's defense spending (1.6% of GDP).
Global Commission on Social Determinants of Health[5][edit | edit source]
Global Commission on Social Determinants of Health CSDH has identified three areas for critical action to combat the health inequities. These include:
- Improve daily living conditions
- Tackle the inequitable distribution of power, money and resources: the structural drivers of those situations of daily life (for example, macroeconomic and urbanization policies and governance);
- Measure and understand the problem and assess the impact of steps taken: expand the knowledge base, develop a workforce that is trained in the determinants of health, and raise public awareness about the determinants of health.
- ↑ Ravindran, T.K. Sundari; Gaitonde, Rakhal, eds (2018). Health Inequities in India. doi:10.1007/978-981-10-5089-3. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5089-3.
- ↑ "Uneven access to health services drives life expectancy gaps: WHO". www.who.int. Retrieved 2022-04-27.
- ↑ "Noncommunicable diseases: Mortality". www.who.int. Retrieved 2022-04-27.
- ↑ "Child mortality and causes of death". www.who.int. Retrieved 2022-04-27.
- ↑ "Commission on Social Determinants of Health". www.who.int. Retrieved 2022-04-27.