Social Capital's Role in Community Health and Individual Wellbeing

This essay examines the multifaceted relationship between social capital and wellbeing, exploring its significance in economic activity, health, and community development. It delves into key theories and concepts, such as cooperative norms, trust, and social networks, and how they facilitate collective action and enhance public good. The essay discusses how social capital improves health by addressing inequalities stemming from poverty, discrimination, and social isolation, emphasizing bonding, bridging, and linking activities as tools for community enhancement. It further explores specific issues like manpower limitations and cultural influences, including individualistic and collectivist societies, and highlights the role of the younger generation, family values, education, employment, and leisure in shaping social capital. The conclusion underscores the critical role of societal culture, values, and principles in determining the nature of social capital and its impact on health and wellbeing, regardless of community density.

Social capital and its
impact on wellbeing
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Introduction
•Social capital is the most important aspect of economic structure
and activity of a particular society
• It is the aggregate of the actual of the potential resources that a
society has.
•A social capital is linked to cooperative norms, trust and social
networks.
•It has a significant impact on the health and wellbeing of the
society in general as well (Song, 2013).

Social Capital and Wellbeing
•Social capital facilitates various different aspects of economic
activity.
•Enhancing the health and wellbeing of any particular society
depends effectively on the economic activity of the society and the
ability of the society (Song, 2013).
•Adequate societal capital can also facilitate active enforcements of
the contracts along with enhancing the provision of the public good.
•Health and wellbeing of the society being a fundamental part of
public good
•It is also crucially linked with the social capital
and its rightful dissemination
(Murayama, Fujiwara & Kawachi, 2012)

Key theories and concepts
•Social capital is the resources that are inherent in the social
relations that helps in facilitating collective action in the society for
the incorporation of the common good (d'Hombres et al., 2010).
•A culture with high social capital has been provisioned as the
bargaining, compromise, and pluralistic politics.
•High social capital facilitates better education, government and
political engagement, better employment networking, better health
outcomes and better security and safety of the society.
•The key facilitators of high social capital in any society are the
voluntary participation, networking, mentoring and mutual
organizational support, and political justice (Poortinga, 2012).

Social capital in relation to enhancing
wellbeing
•In order to enhance the wellbeing of any society, the emphasis
should be at discovering the different needs of the different sectors
of the society.
•Health and wellbeing of society is critically linked with addressing
the needs of all the different sectors of the society (d'Hombres et al.,
2010)
•Different sector of the society in most of the developing countries do
not get to access similar health and wellbeing support as the
mainstream society.
•A key indicator of the health and wellbeing of the society in the
developing nations are the inequalities and barriers (Poortinga,
2012).

How social capital improves health
•Health inequalities stem from a series of different interlinked
factor, poverty, low educational achievement, poor environment,
age and gender discrimination, racial discrimination and many
more.
•Social capital can help eradicate the negative impact on the health
and wellbeing of the different sectors of the society (Giordano &
Lindstrom, 2010).
•The health inequalities that are a direct result of social isolation,
low levels of support and low self-confidence can be improved by
the enhanced social capital
•A good social capital including strong networks,
good levels of support and positive relationships
can help in reducing the greater impact of societal
inequalities easily (Domínguez & Arford, 2010).

Different social capital tools
•The enhancement of the social capital in the sector for eradicating
the health inequalities of a community is facilitated by a number of
different activities
•Bonding is a social capital activity that helps in reducing social
isolation and discrimination related social rejection (Poortinga,
2012).
•Bonding activities include Buddying, Mentoring, Informal group
activities
•Bridging helps in improving health literacy and understanding of
the community.
•Bridging includes Volunteering opportunities, Time banks,
educative get together, community skill development programs,

Continued…
•Linking is the component of the social capital that helps in
identifying the greater needs of the society and attracting
government attention in fulfilling the needs.
•It includes gathering input from service users, facilitating
information sharing networks by the government and
nongovernment organizations, interaction sessions for the public
to voice their needs (Domínguez & Arford, 2010).

Specific issues
•There are various issues that can arise in the materialization of
the social capital and its rightful use to the betterment of the
health and wellbeing of the society.
•The lack of manpower and effort is the main reason behind the
social capital.
The society has discovered different outlets for social
engagements and hence the decline of social capital is rising.
•The not for profit organizations are not compensating for the vast
sector of society engaged in social networking website and
televisions.
•The lack of supervision in the different social capital scenario can
be defined as the scenario that affects the optimal usage of the
social capital.

Indicators of social capital that may inform
policy
•Indicators of the social capital can also play a crucial role in the
identification and implementation of policy design.
•Database resources can be the most important facilities that may
help in propelling policy change in the health and welfare
structure.
•Other key indicators of this process are survey reports, census
data,personal complaint mails from the citizens, etc

Society, social capital and high density
community
•A high density community can be defined by any societal
structure that had more than sufficient population.
•A very common misconception regarding social capital of a high
density community is that high manpower is equivalent to high
social capital.
•Although, in case of the high density communities high population
often acts detrimental to the optimal usage of the social capital
•The quality and intensity of the social capital for any community,
regardless of it being high density or low density is critically
associated with the lifestyle and values of the society.

Community culture and social capital
•The culture if the community is very crucial for determining
the nature of the social capital of the community.
•Individualistic societies are associated with lesser social
capital.
•The individualistic societies include people with low attention
towards the common good of the people (Elgar et al., 2011).
•In individualistic society or community, people are only
concerned with the good of them selves or their extended
relatives.
•This cultural influence refrains from the individuals being
associated with common good of the whole communityn (Elgar
et al., 2011)