Determinants of Health and Well-being

The provided study summarizes the importance of determinants of health in individual and community life. It highlights various determinants such as diet, natural environment, and household income that have positive and negative impacts on health and well-being. The report also discusses behavioral change and educational approaches to develop healthy habits, emphasizing the significance of taking a holistic approach to improve physical and mental health.

DETERMINANTS OF
HEALTH AND ILLNESS

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
This study includes the domain of various factors such as personal, social, economic and
environmental factors that create an impact on the health status and affect the nature or outcome
of individual's or communities are known as determinants of health. Determinants are important
as they help in determining patterns and the total number of disease in population. These factors
are interrelated to each other to determine the health status of individual and population and their
probability of getting sick or injured. It also describes the three important determinants that can
help in shaping the health of population groups around the world are diet, natural environment
and household income and what are the impacts, outcomes and approaches to reduce the negative
impacts.
MAIN BODY
Diet Determinant
This determinant concerns about the obesity, behaviour, physical inactivity and poor diet which
is the major public health issues when they don't follow a healthy diet and are important to
maintain the quality of life among the ageing population.
Impact of diet on individual
Positive: Impacts of healthy diet on individual's health provides a various benefits like it
give the energy to keep the body active entire day and it provides the nutrients which helps in
growth of our body and help us to stay strong and prevent from illness. The health food diet
includes vegetables, fruits, whole-grain and low-fat dairy helps in reducing the chance of heart
disease by balancing the blood pressure and cholesterol level. Eating fish in a week can also good
for heart health (Cassel, 2017). A diet which is rich in calcium makes the bones and teeth strong.
Calcium is generally found in dairy products and dark green vegetables as they vitamin D which
helps in absorbing calcium. Eating a healthy diet keeps weight steady and decrease the chances
of diseases.
Negative: Unhealthy eating habits can affect the quality of life and cause physical
inactivity. The food items which are high in carbohydrates, sugar, fat can cause diabetes, bone
injuries due to lack of calcium and heart diseases due to increase blood pressure and cholesterol
level.
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Outcomes
Positive: Community members hold the key to the positive change by increasing healthy
food and sustainable business opportunities. A healthy and reliable access to affordable,
nutritious food will reduce the chances of diseases in the community. Public health professionals
helps to acknowledge people about the importance of an environment to make healthy choice.
They are targeting to achieve changes in legislation like smoking which can reduce heart disease
risks.
Negative: The lifestyle of people, groups, nation can create negative impact on the health
status. It creates impact on their day to day activity and diet. The community who follows
unhealthy lifestyles encounter death, illness and even death. There are various problems caused
by unhealthy lifestyles like overweight, hypertension, metabolic diseases etc. People living in
urban societies generally rely on unhealthy diet, alcohol, drug consumption. Urban lifestyle have
unhealthy diet due to consumption of fast foods and poor foods causing heart problems. For e.g.
in UK 90,000 people are dying every year due to poor choices of food like junk food.
Therefore, following an unhealthy diet can lead to various problems both to individual
and community (Delara, 2016). As it affect the physical and mental state of the person by not
providing the sufficient nutrients like vitamin C, vitamin D, proteins whereas consuming foods
which are high in carbohydrates, fats and sugars which causes heart problems, diabetes and
overweight.
Approach
Educational approach can increase the consciousness on healthy diet and by providing the
good quality health education make people aware about the health problems, consequences and
the methods to prevent them. It will help to understand which know;edge is appropriate to deal
with the disease. Another main advantage of health education is that it will develop a positive
attitude. It encourages people to maintain health practices and behaviour for e.g. consumption of
tobacco is injurious to health as it causes cancer. Behavioural change can also help in improving
health issues as it tells individual to take healthy diet and make them realize about the bad habits
that can affect their health like smoking cigarette, consumption of alcohol etc.
Natural Environment Determinant
It is essential to balance the ecological nature of environment as it have direct impact on
the well being health through harmful substances such as air pollution and toxic elements like
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carbon dioxide. Natural environment with existence of trees can help in preventing air pollution
and reducing level of carbon dioxide which is the cause of global warming.
Impact
Positive: Natural environment improves the memory function and helps in emotional
regulation of the well being. By walking in nature it helps people who are suffering from
depression and help in reducing the stresses like hypertension. It also helps in increasing the
focus and attention by doing outdoor activities and improve creative abilities. Existence of nature
gives greater amount of oxygen which improves the regulation of breathing more efficiently. For
e.g. UK has the top ecological institutes that are researching on biodiversity conservation issues
which can benefit nature worldwide like Birdlife International Institution ranks 1st in UK and
global rank is 24th. Sustainable environment can provide clean air, fresh water and climate
stability.
Negative: With the less of oxygen in the nature can give physical symptoms to well being
like headache, breathing problem, hypertension, dizziness etc. Disruption of land, deforestation,
urban civilization is having a great impact on ecosystem and also increasing cardio-vascular
diseases and creating negative impact on person's mental health. For e.g. In UK, the effects of
particulate matter which is the combination of dust, smoke and liquid droplets are consistently
increasing and thereby, causing air pollution, cardio-vascular and respiratory problems.
Outcomes
Positive: A well balance nature improves the network of social relationship and influence
on health behaviours. The social environment also plays important role to maintain the natural
environment as it improves the mental and physical health. The good natural environment can
help in spiritual enhancement as environmental psychologists concluded that it add value to the
human-nature relationship. It creates feeling of gratitude and appreciation between the
communities who like to stay in nature.
Negative: The environmental effects of harmful substances like carbon dioxide can cause
respiratory failure, spinal cord injury etc. which can affect the whole community and the main
reason is air pollution which is increasing due to urbanization. This exposure of toxic substances
to the community causes cardio-vascular diseases both to adults and children through disruption
in the functionality of cells, blood and internal organs of human body. For e.g. UK environment
is fighting pollution and improving the health. In 2015, 27000 fewer life lost suffering from
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cardio-vascular, respiratory diseases due to natural pollution because of removal of plants across
the UK.
A well balanced environment can improves health but if deforestation and number of
trees get reduced then supply of oxygen will become less and increase the amount of carbon
dioxide in the environment (Marmot, 2017). Due to less consumption of oxygen will disturb the
functions of cells, blood and internal organs of the body and weaken the immune system which
will increase the chances of disease like cardio-vascular, respiratory failure and spinal code
injury to the well beings. For e.g. in UK, the second main cause of death is cardio-vascular
disease. Every year 42,000 people died prematurely from cardio-vascular disease.
Approach
Social Change is the approach which change the attitude of society and people to reduce
the negative impacts on natural environment and bring positive outcomes to balance the
ecological nature of environment.
As the population, culture, technology and urbanization is increasing, therefore, people
also need to increase their awareness and consciousness towards nature to prevent it from getting
imbalanced. There are many environmental issues caused by political, economical and cultural
factors. The people need to change the socio-economic activities and need to contribute to make
the planet more sustainable with less consumption of natural resources like trees, water and land.
Due to urbanization people are not aware of using the resources efficiently as they disrupting
land, cutting trees, mining for natural resources like coal, ore etc. which is disturbing the
ecosystem of the world. The whole society need to get aware and start planting trees and reduce
deforestation which will create a positive impact and improves their physical and mental health.
Determinant of Household Income
Household income is considered as most essential determinant that has high impact over
individual and community’s well-being. If person has adequate income sources, then individual
can afford medical check-up and other treatments but if person do not have adequate funds then
individual may get failed to receive timely treatment for their illness (Park, and Jacobs, 2018).
There is significant relationship between health condition and household income. Adequate
income aids in monitoring health conditions timely and taking proactive measures to remain
healthy all the time.
Impact
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Positive: The household income plays an important role in aspects to health and disease
treatment. The family who are having higher household income will have improvements in
housing and improved mental and physical health as they have money to go for medical check-
ups and treatments on daily basis. People with higher income have enough resources like safe
houses, clean air, fresh water, opportunities to exercise and better schools.
Negative: Stress can occur due to low income in the household which can increase the
chances of heart disease, stroke etc. People who have lower income in their household have less
money to take care of themselves as they cannot visit doctors can't afford the money for
medicines or healthy food. Most of the family doesn't get enough money from the job and some
of them are unemployed as well. This creates burden for them to help their family to provide
food and shelter for their survival.
Outcome
Low income household suffers from various diseases like cardio-vascular, heart disease,
diabetes etc. which is caused due to stress, poor food and poor house as they don't have enough
money to buy the resources and don't have money to go for daily health check ups and treatment
and can't afford healthy food and medicines when they fell sick. They don' have better education,
clean air and safe houses which lead them to suffer from ill health. Thus, household income plays
an important role to protect the health and prevent it from various diseases.
Approach
Empowerment approach can be used here to resolve this negative impacts as this
approach will help them to encourage putting extra efforts so that they can increase their
household income. Empowerment is the process of gaining freedom and will give power to low
income household to control what is happening to them. Women in the house can also help in
increasing income by doing side business(Weiss, and Lonnquist, 2017). As women who is
uneducated can work as maid or cook for other people as they don't need experience in this field,
they are already serving their house as housewife so they know the work. This empowerment
approach can make them feel confident and strong enough that they will realize they are capable
of doing more and will increase their enthusiasm and generate a sense of authority amongst them.
This will increase their willing power and try to work hard.
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CONCLUSION
From the above study it had been summarized that determinant of health plays an
important role in individual and community life. The report highlighted the different
determinants like diet, natural environment and household income which creates positive and
negative impacts on the health of the well being. This report also showed the outcomes or
consequences of particular determinant like for diet the outcome was unhealthy food increases fat
and creates diseases. The following approaches was discussed to resolve this factors which can
improve the physical and mental health of the society such as behavioural change and
educational approach was used to develop habit of taking healthy diet.
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REFERENCES
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425.
Delara, M., 2016. Social determinants of immigrant women’s mental health. Advances in Public
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OLDER ADULTS WITH LIMITED-ENGLISH PROFICIENCY. Innovation in Aging, 2(Suppl 1).
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Weiss, G. L. and Lonnquist, L. E., 2017. The sociology of health, healing, and illness. Routledge.
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