Social, Economic, and Physical Impacts on Public Health

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IMPACTS OF HEALTH RISKS
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IMPACTS OF HEALTH RISKS
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
Background of the Research............................................................................................................4
Rationale of the Research................................................................................................................6
Research Aim...................................................................................................................................6
Research Objectives.........................................................................................................................6
Research Question...........................................................................................................................6
Literature Review............................................................................................................................7
Impacts of social environment that create health risks to the public...........................................7
Impacts of economic environment that create health risks to the public.....................................9
Impacts of physical environment that create health risks to the public.....................................10
Methodology..................................................................................................................................12
Introduction................................................................................................................................12
Research philosophy..................................................................................................................12
Research approach:....................................................................................................................13
Research design.........................................................................................................................13
Data sources:..............................................................................................................................13
Data collection method..............................................................................................................14
Sampling....................................................................................................................................14
Ethics and Anti-Oppressive Practice.............................................................................................14
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Project Outline...............................................................................................................................15
Project Timetable...........................................................................................................................16
References......................................................................................................................................18
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Introduction
In the modern world, healthcare has taken an unprecedented place amongst the lives of the
people, which has helped them to tackle health risks and issues and has improved their health.
Health risks are created due to a variety of reasons, which can affect the lives of the individual as
well as everyone around them (Lundgren and McMakin, 2018). Health risks for the people are
created as a product of the internal as well as external environment, which can cause various
diseases and illnesses as well as wounds and health damages. The following research study
critically analyses and evaluates the impacts of the social, economic and physical environments
that create health risks to the people.
Background of the Research
In the modern world, people have evolved to the point where they have taken specific measures
to help them avoid or prevent health risks that could be fatal for them. From the research works
of Brown and Jones (2016), it has been found that over 43% of the people on a national level
suffer from some health risks that may or may not be detrimental for them in terms of their
health as well as social life.
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Figure 1: People Suffering From Health Risks
(Source: Lundgren and McMakin, 2018)
However, there are many major factors that can cause the health risks for the individuals. These
include both the internal and external environment. While the internal environment signifies the
internal aspects of the individuals such as their immunity level, diet, and many more, external
health is categorized into many more categories. The external environment consists of the social,
economic and physical environments (Zhang et al., 2017). The social environment consists of the
social life as well as the society and community that surround the individual. The economic
environment consists of the economic condition in which the individual exists. Finally, the
physical environment consists of the regular normal environment as well as all the physical
objects that surround that individual.
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Rationale of the Research
While there are multiple factors which are able to induce health risks within the individuals,
however, it is unknown to what extent they impact the health of the people. Furthermore, it is
unknown how the social, economic and physical environments are related to the health risks of
the people. The following research study would try to find the impacts of the social, economic
and physical environments that create health risks to the people. This would help to comprehend
the main reasons as to how the social, economic and physical environments are related to the
health risks of the people. Moreover, this would also help to contribute to future researches
pertaining to external environment’s impact on the health of the people.
Research Aim
The following research study aims to critically analyse and evaluates the impacts of the social,
economic and physical environments that create health risks to the people. The study also aims to
find suitable recommendations to prevent or mitigate the health risks for the people.
Research Objectives
The objectives for this research study are:
 To evaluate the impacts of social environment that create health risks to the people
 To evaluate the impacts of economic environment that create health risks to the people
 To evaluate the impacts of physical environment that create health risks to the people
Research Question
The research questions for this research study are:
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 What are the impacts of social environment that create health risks to the people?
 What are the impacts of economic environment that create health risks to the people?
 What are the impacts of physical environment that create health risks to the people?
Literature Review
Impacts of social environment that create health risks to the public
The social environment is one of the major factors when it comes to creating health risks to the
public. As it can be seen in real life, the social environment in the life of a person is a set of a
multitude of different factors, such as how the birth environment, family environment, learning
environment, workplace environment and many other aspects of our social life. Sallis, Owen and
Fisher (2015) argued that these factors can be indirectly addressed as the various socio-economic
status of a person, such as the quality of education, quality and availability of health care
services, quality of transportation services and various other factors. These social factors create
and define the social environment, which plays one of the most vital role in determining the
lifestyle of a person living in that social environment. For instance, according to Marmot (2015),
it is generally seen that if the parents of a child has inadequate level of education, then that child
has approximately 46% more chance to live in an unsanitary, unsafe and deteriorating
environment which will severely hamper the growth of that child. In other words, it can be said
that the social environment and upbringing of a person is one of the most vital determinants of
the amount and quality of living resources that are to be available to that person.
As it has been seen from various researches in sociology, the most important social
environmental factors creating the risks of bad health in public are the moral quality of the
society and the educational system provided to the members of that society. For instance,
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Whitehead, Shaver and Stephenson (2016) argued that a high rate of criminal activities in a
certain society indicates that the moral quality and character of that society is certainly
decreasing. This kind of environment is extremely adverse for maintaining good public health,
because this increasing rate of criminal activities causes anxiety and fear in the minds of the
people living in that society, eventually deteriorating the mental health of those people.
On the contrary, Arcaya, Arcaya and Subramanian (2015) argued that the lack of educational
infrastructure or system in a particular society is also one of the most vital factors that affects the
rate of literacy among then people living in that society. For instance, the civic sense present
among the people of a society is heavily impacted by the literacy rate and educational
qualifications of those people, and good civic sense increases the cleanliness and standard of
living for them by approximately 67%, essentially creating good health (Garg, Boynton-Jarrett
and Dworkin, 2016). On the other hand, the inadequate amount of academic educational
infrastructure, such as less number of schools, unstable or outdated academic syllabus, simply
teaching descriptive knowledge and ignoring analytical knowledge in a society are the reasons
that naturally increases the risk of bad health in public of that society. The government health
policies also plays a crucial role in it, where giving less importance on health missions and
cleanliness activities by the local governmental bodies increases the health risk for public.
The family background and environment is also one of the vital factors for public health. For
instance, Stanhope et al. (2015) argued that a child living in a family where his or parents have
tension between them can be extremely detrimental to the mental health of that child. It can be
noted that this may also be a result of workplace background, where excessive pressure in
workplace or getting less than sufficient salary can cause mental distress among parents, which
may eventually adversely affect the child, essentially creating an overall public health risk.
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Impacts of economic environment that create health risks to the public
The economic environment of a society is also a major factor that affects the level of health risk
present to the public of that society. It can be seen that the economic status of the society is
determined by several different factors, such as the various economic indexes like the inflation
rate, GDP per capita, bank rate and the others. On the other hand, Whitehead et al. (2016) argued
that some other economic factors, such as the development level of the industries, the average
income of the working force, and most of all, the average expenses of the medical treatment and
facilities available are also extremely vital for determining the health risk of the public. For
instance, as opined by Patton et al. (2016), it can be seen that a high inflation rate increases the
price of many day-to-day necessities, which forces many people to not be able to buy them. This
essentially decreases their standard of living, and consequently their health risk is also increased.
On the other hand, the other economic indexes such as GDP per capita determine the earnings of
the general public of a country, and a lesser value of GDP indicates lesser earnings by the public,
indicating a reduced living standard and increased health risk.
The level of industrial development in a country also indicates the capacity of pharmaceutical
products and medicine manufacturing in that country. As the production of pharmaceutical
products and medicine often requires very sophisticated machineries, it may also indicate the
technological development of that country (Keleher and MacDougall, 2015). It can be noted that
the technological and industrial development increases the average cost and quality of medical
equipments available in the hospitals and health centers in that country by approximately 38%.
Naturally, this determines the availability of proper medical treatments to the people of that
society, and a high cost of medical treatments or unavailability of advanced medical equipments
or pharmaceutical drugs eventually end up raising the public health risk. Moreover, Parakh,
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Karthikeyan and Bhargava (2015) argued that the average wages earned by the public is also one
of the most vital factors, and a less than sufficient average wage heavily reduces the chances of
the public's affordability of medical treatments, which greatly increases their health risk.
Impacts of physical environment that create health risks to the public
Physical environment is a very important factor to consider while analyzing health risks of the
public. It is one of the most important and major factor and plays an important role in the well
being of the people. As per the words of Dueñas et al., (2016), the main factors of physical
environment that should be taken into account while considering the health of the public are
harmful substances present in the air humans breathe. This may include harmful gases, dust
particles and toxic wastes and many more. They basically focus on the classic environmental
epidemiology. Access to various resources related to health is also a valid factor. These can
include healthy and unhealthy food, medicines, medical facilities and recreational resources.
Another very important factor is the community design and the built environment. This may
include things like street connectivity, land use mix and available transportation system.
Physical environment can affect the health of people through exposures like pollution in air and
many more. There can be various affects when exposed to solid particles as well as liquid
substances in the air. They can mainly cause cardiovascular and respiratory problem. As opined
by van den Bosch and Sang, (2017), there has been an increase in mortality and morbidity rates
due to cardio vascular and respiratory problems in the last 5 years due to increased level of
pollution in United Kingdom. There are various physiological mechanism which affects the
Inflammatory, Vascular and Autonomic processes in the body. The environmental risks can be
caused in either a direct or an indirect method. In the direct method, people are often exposed to
harmful and toxic agents that may prove to be fatal many a times. In the indirect method, the
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people are often disrupted from ecosystems that are life sustaining. In the words of Mueller et al.,
(2015), it can estimated that thirteen million deaths are cause annually from environmental
causes. Most of the times these problems were preventable if proper and required actions were
taken. It has been seen that around 24% healthy years of life lost and 23% of premature mortality
is caused by environmental causes. As per the reports of Triguero-Mas et al.,(2015), 100 children
die every day in develop countries due to exposure to indoor smokes that is caused by solid fuels.
These environmental issues are caused due to the development taking place all around the world.
The huge development of the country in aspects of economy, infrastructure and many more
along with huge rate of population growth are the main factors that cause the degradation of the
environment to a great extent. The main driving forces of health problems related to the
environment are the agricultural intensification, development, industrialization and increased use
of energy for various developmental aspects. Both developed as well developing countries face
these health issues. The developing countries mainly face problems like poverty, scarcity of
healthy drinking water, sanitation and lack of infrastructure as well as technology for proper
medication of the ill patients. As opined by Martinez et al., (2015), they also have industrial
pollution due to all the development taking place around the country. However, the health issues
are in a more critical state in the developed countries. This is due to the extensive
industrialization in the countries. They are highly developed with a lot of factories and
infrastructure. They emit a lot of harmful substances in the air. These problems are mainly
attributed to pollution of air and water in the urban areas and setup. The main health hazard the
public is facing in the current world is the problem of Asthma. This is solely caused due to the
extensive pollution in the air. In the words of Bouchard et al., (2018), the erosion of ecosystems
can increase the risk caused due to existing diseases like malaria and cholera and also give birth
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to new risky and life threatening diseases. The extensive climate change due to the problem of
global warming is also risking the health of the public to a great extent. This also affects the well
being of people and has emerged as a global concern. Climate change mainly causes 2.4%
diarrhea in the world and 6% malaria all over the globe. This is due to the rapid fluctuation in the
current temperatures of the world. They also affect the health of the people with problems like
cold and cough, heat strokes, pneumonia and many more.
Methodology
Introduction
The research methodology refers to the process, rather the framework that should be used for
conducting the research. The implementation of research methodology would be used for
understanding the different sections that should be used for achieving the research outcome.
Research philosophy
Research philosophy helps to understand the importance of the research and understanding of the
process that has been used for conducting the research. Mostly, positivism, realism and
interpretivism are used for research philosophy (Kumar, 2019). Positivism helps to find out the
logic behind the research topic and analyses it with logical coherence, whereas interpretivism is
about following the natural law and discarding the logical coherence of the research. Realism is
the combination of the two.
Justification: In the present research, positivism has been used as the research philosophy for
generation of the research. The logical coherence behind the social, economic and environmental
environment creating health risk can be analysed scientifically. As the study is to be completed
within a specific time, it is needed to use positivism.
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