Poverty and Health: Analyzing Social Determinants in Australia

This essay examines the social determinants of health, focusing on the impact of poverty on the Australian population. It discusses how factors such as socioeconomic status, education, employment, and access to resources influence health outcomes. The essay highlights health inequalities, noting that Australians living below the poverty line are more likely to suffer from chronic health conditions and have lower life expectancies. It explores the effects of poverty on access to food, shelter, and clothing, and how these deficiencies contribute to various health problems. The essay also analyzes the broader economic and social consequences of health disparities and references global initiatives aimed at addressing social determinants of health, such as the World Health Organization's Commission on Social Determinants of Health. It concludes by emphasizing the need for further research and policy interventions to reduce health inequalities and improve health outcomes for disadvantaged populations in Australia.

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Social Determinant of Health
Student’s Name
Institution Affiliate
Date

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Introduction
To study social determinant of health, we need to consider the globalization context as a
key point as health is globally an issue that should be addressed with much emphasis. The social
determinant of health generally is how people in every society live, work together and how they
push towards improving health status. A good health condition is seen in our homes, workplaces,
neighborhoods, and communities. To live healthy lives, we need to eat a balanced diet, do some
physical practice, get screen test and recommended immunization, avoid smoking drugs and
using harmful drugs and always visit the doctor to examine our health conditions on regular
basis. As well, our health is determined by the economic prevalence, resources, and opportunities
available in our societies, the quality of education, cleanliness of the drinking water and the
nature of social interaction and relationships. Talking on globalization, and conducting thorough
scrutiny of the factors mentioned above, it will be easier to make some comparison on health
among nations around the globe and state categorically why some nation in America are
healthier than others.
Over the past decades, the creation of a social and physical environment that promoted
good health or all was created to mark global connectivity and the main agender for the social
determinant of health. This was published by the world’s health organization in 2008 as a report
to seal up the gap of generation in health equity through the action of social determinant of
health as the second agender (Donkin, et.al, 2018). The report was embraced by the U.S health
initiative specifically in a national prevention and health promotion strategy and national
partnership for action to end health disparities. All the American's were given a free choice to
make a decision for good health. This was fastened by improving education, business, childcare,
law, transportation, and agriculture conditions to advance on the health issue.

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Choose a population from a culture other than your own, that is susceptible to, or protected from,
health problems due to social determinant e.g. families living under the poverty line in western
countries such as Australia
The effects of the impoverished population have been described by social determinants of
health in poverty through health and health inequality. Health inequality can further be studied in
peoples lives via age, working environment and how they affect people's capacity to respond to
diseases. The conditions are well defined by the political, economic and social structures. Most
of the people suffer health issues due to bad governance and poor relationship between the
structures. A good social determinant of health is as a result of a combination of remarkable
living conditions and the social drivers working as a unit.
Some uncontrollable conditions of external factors also attribute to health inequalities.
The inequalities manifest in an avoidable and unjust forms to daily life situations. In most cases,
the health inequalities are linked to poverty, poor access to good health services and
discrimination to various services. The following are some facts that were established in
Australia: It was revealed in 2014-15 that the people that live below the poverty lines in
Australia, were 1.6 times likely to suffer from chronic health conditions health conditions like
diabetes, high blood pressure and cancer than the well-off Australian families, the death rate of
the low-income families are high with three years less than those that their social status are
highly placed in the economy and in 2013 the mothers from low socioeconomic area gave birth
to babies that had low birthweight compared to mothers from high socioeconomic areas.
The key identification of social determinant of health and wellbeing of the Australian
people, their socioeconomic ranking, social exclusion, work and employment, the per-capita
income and early life circumstances were collected from the evidence obtained political,

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economic, social and cultural avenues. Poverty is caused by low education achievement, the
netizens are not well equipped, lack secure income, inadequate provision and incapable of
coping with the better health terms. Hence there should be a world’s drive to fight poverty at all
cost.
Explain using your own words how poverty in social determinant of health affects the
Australian population.
It is said that people from poorer economic backgrounds are more likely to suffer from
poor health compared to people from more advantaged and improved social setup. Poverty as a
social determinant has greatly undermined the health of an individual or a community at large. It
is said that families that live below the poverty line experience unemployment problems, low and
poor quality of education, inadequate industrialization and inadequate health facilities and
services. This is as a result of low per capita income and redundant economic growth. All these
are majorly caused by political instability, corruption and dictatorship kind of leadership where
the leaders can embezzle development funds without question by the public. As a result,
dependency ration goes high for the majority of the population(Bhalla, & Lapeyre, 2016). Their
youths become wasted as they only lazy around finally join drugs and unhealthy business that
promotes terrorism and unlawfulness. More of physical injuries are encountered in hospitals but
treatment and medication services are not up to standards causing a prolonged suffering period
and finally premature deaths.
Food, shelter, and clothing are the basic human needs that need to be attained on a daily
basis. Low-income families who are unable to attain these basic conditions suffer health
conditions caused by exposure to their insufficiency. Malnutrition causes deficiency diseases
such as marasmus, scurvy diabetes, among other diseases. A person’s health is affected by

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biomedical factors and health behavior that comprise of their genetic make-up and lifestyle. The
biomedical factors can either be positive or negative depending on the body’s immune system.
Vaccination against diseases takes the positive factor as an example and drug abuse takes
the negative factors side. Biomedical factors such as high blood pressure have a direct impact on
chronic disease and other illnesses. It was established that 23% of Australian adults suffered high
blood pressure in the year 2014-15. High blood pressure is known to cause heart diseases, stroke,
chronic kidney diseases and heart failure (Eldredge, et.al, 2016). Globally, the word is in the
move for providing and developing a universal food program that is aimed at solving the global
food problem. Among the strategies to improve this are, improving the agricultural sector,
developing more food industries around the globe, enabling export and import in trade for
verified food staff and licensed donations.
The adverse effects of shelter problems come with the environmental conditions around.
Unplanned settlement of people around causes environmental depredation due to careless catting
of trees, improper waste products management that causes pollution to the air, water, and land.
When the environment is polluted, more contagious diseases such as Ebola, cold flu, typhoid and
many more easily spread. Their diseases spread with exonerating forces that affect many people
within a very short time causing deaths outbreak of the other diseases as well. The social health
determinant of the poor Australians requires that the environment be clean and well maintained
but where and how will this happen when the living conditions and the economic development is
low? The nations work hand in hand to eradicate this problem by providing civic education on
how waste products can be handled and how to tackle the outbreak of the diseases that are
contagious.

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On clothing, clothes cover the human body from direct contact with the cold, wind,
sunlight, rain and contaminated surfaces. People living and the poverty line might find it hard to
afford the god clothes for their body’s protection. This exposes them to various risks of
contamination of various diseases and infections. Emphasizing on the social determinant of
health, lack of proper clothing has been reported among the indigenous people whose records on
the admittance of pneumonia patients in the local hospitals were reported to be 34% in 2015-16
(Ewart, et.al, 2017). This problem can be prevented by the interpretation of weather forecasting
to help people to know how they can plan themselves within certain weather breakouts that
affect them. This as well encourages the type of clothes to be made depending on the weather
prevalence.
Analyze the impact(s) of poverty in social determinant of health on the selected
population using evidence from the literature.
The impacts of poverty in social determinant of health are felt in the outcomes of the
good or poor health conditions of people and the economy. They can be of varied dimensions to
the economy and health standards. Studies have proven that health inequalities caused by
economic and social determinant are biased and not much required since they are produced
socially that can be improved through rigorous policies that take care of health status and
socioeconomic inequalities. There arose a global interest in analyzing the different supporting
drivers of social and economic conditions and health status facilitated the World Health
Organization. (WHO) IN 2005 that came up with the Commission of Social Determinant of
Health (CSDH). The main agender of the commission was to develop equity of health and
intensify the support of the organization to its member states in enforcing a comprehensive
health issues approach. "Closing the gap in a generation" was the title of the report that was

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established by the CSDH to provide an evidential summary in addition to the three broad policy
recommendations that can be segmented further into fifty policy measures.
Many scientific inventions have been developed over the years to tackle the determinants
of health globally in order to provide the scientific knowledge of the simplest forms of curbing
the current existing health problems. The levels of economic development among different
countries vary considerably bringing a shift in the levels of determinants of health across the
world. The second effect is, the health inequality is booth multi-faceted having several causes as
a social phenomenon hence requires advanced leveled research at community, national,
international and continental levels.
A number of researches that have been conducted in Africa are minimal compared to
other continents in identifying the appropriate social determinant of health and how to come up
with actions based on evidence policies. The literature review was studied among the already
published papers on the socioeconomic determinants of health (Flahaux, & De Haas, 2016). The
review method of the four broad issues was drawn as follows; are there specific social
determinants of health in the developing countries? Secondly, the causal of civil unrest and
different health outcomes as explained by the clan segregation and localization effects brought
about by historical pathway issues, to reduce health inequalities, what policy area should be
given priority? And finally, how should a research based on evidence of social determinants of
health with regard to African countries be operated to familiarize with the issues and to designate
effective intervention policies for them?
To narrow the gap in health disparities in third world countries, further research is needed
specifically in African disparities in health inequality and health status between the individual
and the societies. Formulating a move to curb this, an Australian Institute of Health and Welfare

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shows that the peers of 17 years of indigenous Australian youths are disadvantaged in the life
expectancy are less compared to the peers from the non-indigenous people. The racial health
disparity is a continuous problem among races that needs to be brought to stop by bridging the
gaps of equity guide among the races as established by the UK’s National Health Services and
Commission for Racial Equality.
Nevertheless, the factors producing health disparities vary in various setting in different
countries. The commission has to a great extent rearranged that the causality is of significance in
pursuit to understanding the problem and to applying appropriate intervention strategy (Goldfeld,
et.al, 2018). This will help to overcome the problems of underrating the developing countries and
patients from low living status. There are differences between health inequality caused by
poverty and that caused by wealthy but imbalanced societies. Thus, the solutions in curbing
health problems cannot be universally practiced in all nations. With the fact that the large
number of African population live below the poverty lines for the international measure implying
that the majority of the Africans cannot afford all the basic requirements, this makes poverty to
be the most prevailing factor undermining health in Africa. Dealing with poverty thus takes a top
priority in solving African health inequality.
The commission of social health thus noted three broad recommendations that are fit for
bridging the inequality of health gap nearly in all countries. The recommendations are; bettering
daily lives and the current conditions of work, to curb the unfair distribution of health facilities
and evaluating the problems for effective handling of health disparities.
Discuss how the negative health impacts associated with your selected SDH could be addressed
to improve the health of this population

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Social and economic factors in relation to health inequality are motivated by changing the
distribution of the negative social and economic determinants. Literature has recorded how the
social and economic status can be associated with the health status of an individual through
living and working conditions (McNamara, 2017). It is not a myth that people living below the
poverty line suffer from poor health conditions, it’s because their social stratification can’t afford
to balance the good health and other basic needs. Linking conservative unhealthy cultural
practices, poverty, armed conflict, tribalism and colonial legacy, migration, poor resource
endowment and continental causes as the main factors that contribute to health inequality and
social determinant of health.
To promote good health for all in Africa, poverty is the giant to battle. Many have failed
to understand between the current impact of poverty and the potential impact of poverty in the
developing nations. Many of their economies are focused on attaining the current challenges and
neglects to put emphasis on future events. This makes the health and other economic problems to
develop a long tail that can only be cut by the visionary global movement that is adjusted to the
current and future happenings.
Poverty protrudes sicknesses through the following aspects; insufficiency of clean water,
poor hygiene, malnutrition and low access to better and advanced health-care services (Hodgetts,
& Stolte, 2017). This is contrary to what happens in countries that are members of the
Organization for Economic Cooperation for Development (OECD) where sicknesses are
enhanced by malnutrition, infectious diseases, low sanitation level, lack of clean water and
undermined access to health care services are not the cause of health inequality. In Organization
for Economic Cooperation for developing countries, the following are the causes of health
inequality; homicide, alcoholism, anxiety, drug abuse, depression, stress, hopelessness are

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caused due to psychological effects that mostly happen in developed but unequal countries.
Egalitarian societies have better health outcomes than the societies with uneven distribution of
resources
Neocolonialism as a factor affected Africa as this led to dependency attitude among the
colonized African states. Political powers are influenced by the colonial legacy and means by
which the production of economic resources take place, lack of tolerance for the differences in
opinion, disrespect for basic human rights, tribal segregation, corruption, abuse of power and
lack of access of information. The divide and rule strategy that was used by their colonial
masters is the same system they have embraced even after they had achieved their own
independence. Quality of health, therefore, depends entirely on the superior tribes, the level of
education, social stratification and other social and economic thresholds. Favoritism resulted in
an equal distribution of national resources not forgetting the health system.
Conclusion
IN many of the African nations, the most serious issues revolve around the political
power gain as well as the degree of the armed dispute over a variety of resources. With more
armed conflict that occurs between nations and internally, there is likely to be some severe health
damaging impact on a particular population. The key outcomes of the armed conflicts include
disability, deaths of many individuals, AIDS, respiratory infections and displacement that comes
along with malnutrition among others. Moreover, the health care services are also disrupted
resulting in the obstruction of a persons trial to access quality health care as well as enhanced
treatment utilization. Consequently, the availability of resources is limited for the key purpose of
development activities that include, health care services by a diversion of resources with the
intent to offer support to the conflict. The long-term effect is always adverse on the health

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especially in relation to degrading the living environment. Reports also indicate that in areas with
armed conflicts, there is likely to be health public problems.

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References
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Donkin, A., Goldblatt, P., Allen, J., Nathanson, V., & Marmot, M. (2018). Global action on the
social determinants of health. BMJ global health, 3(Suppl 1), e000603.
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(2016). Planning health promotion programs: an intervention mapping approach. John
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Ewart, S. B., Happell, B., Bocking, J., Platania‐Phung, C., Stanton, R., & Scholz, B. (2017).
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Flahaux, M. L., & De Haas, H. (2016). African migration: trends, patterns, drivers. Comparative
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