Analyzing Social Determinants of Health in Indigenous Communities

This report provides a comprehensive community assessment focusing on the social determinants of health (SDH) and their impact, using the indigenous community of Australia as a case study. It explores various SDH, including education, healthcare access, economic stability, social and community context, and the built environment. The assessment highlights the challenges faced by the indigenous community due to factors such as low literacy rates, inadequate healthcare facilities, economic instability, discrimination, and poor living conditions. The report examines how these determinants influence health outcomes, emphasizing the need for improved access to education, healthcare services, and economic opportunities to enhance the overall well-being of the community. The analysis references multiple studies and sources to support its findings and concludes by emphasizing the critical role of SDH in shaping health and development within communities.

Community assessment

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION:..........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION:...............................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES:...............................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION:
Social determinant of health are the conditions in which people are born, live, work and
learn. It refers to different functions and outcomes of life. It is related to social, economic factors.
It also involves resources that are used to improve the quality of life (Ferrer, 2018). They have a
high impact on health outcomes. This report will show how SDH determine the health and well
being of a particular society. Also, how people are affected by conditions in which they live,
work, born, etc. For this report the indigenous community of Australia is taken as an example.
This community is highly been affected by unavailability of both social and physical
determinant.
MAIN BODY
It is very important to understand the place of living and impact on place on health of
people. This provides social as well as physical determinants of SDH. The examples of social
determinants are quality of education and job, access to health care services, public safety, social
support, etc. While examples of physical determinants are housing design (Rubin, 2016).
Schools, environment, etc. By analysing these the positive and negative influence of social or
economic conditions can be found out. It will help in improving the quality of life in SDH There
are various social determinants of health that is used to identify health outcome :-
Community profile:- These people lives in areas like Victoria. They refer to aborignial and
torres strait islander people.
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Education- It refers to early child development and education. Generally, it means educating the
child to make him or her a successful person.
When a person will not be educated then it will be difficult for him or her to fulfil the
needs. This may be due to lack of education awareness among the community or financial
condition (McClintock & Bogner, (2017)
The indigenous community of Australia is having very low literacy rate. They are not
getting enough education facilities to educate their children. This has highly affected their
growth and development. Moreover, due to illiteracy their lifestyle is very poor (Braveman and
Gottlieb, 2014). There are children who go to school but they are not able to carry on their
education till higher level. This is the major drawback of this poor illiteracy rate of this
community. Now, they also don't want to get educated and are restricting their children to do so.
This makes them difficult to understand about health programs or services.
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Illustration 1: Social Determinants of Health
(Source: Social Determinants of Health, 2016)

As given in the graph it clearly shows that there has been improvement in the education
within community. People are sending their children to schools. Apart from 2006, the number of
children going to school has in 2011. From this it is concluded that people are getting literate
slowly.
Health and health care- It is related to health literacy or access to health care. It includes basic
health services.
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Study shows that due to inadequate health facilities people are suffering from diseases.
Also, due to lack of hospital in that area people are not able to access health services. (Palacios,
(2016).
The community is not getting proper health care facilities or services. This is due to low
income level or malnutrition. Due to poor health services people health status is very weak. Their
life expectancy rate is low as compared to others (Marmot and Allen, 2014). Besides this, most
of the people are suffering from various diseases. Moreover, government is not focused on
providing basic health care services to them. Along with this, they are not having resources so
that they can get basic services. This has resulted in poor mental as well as physical health of
people. That's why their health status is very poor. This creates gaps between people on the basis
of income level.
Economic stability- It consists of employment, food insecurity, poverty and housing instability.
It reflects the economic condition of family or society.
Study shows that people who do not employment are not able to grow and develop. This
leads to poverty, food security, etc. (Goldberg, (2017).
The indigenous community people economic condition is very poor. They are not having
proper houses and are not getting food to eat (Garg and et.al., 2015). Besides this, as they are not
enough educated most of the people are unemployed. So all these factors have lead to poor
economic condition of this community. Furthermore, government schemes are not reaching to
these people. Also, their per day income is not rising due to economic instability. Thus, people
have to live with what they are earning daily. Poor health care leads to discrimination among
people.
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Social and community context- It is related to discrimination, social cohesion, etc. They show
crimes and discrimination that is prevailing within the society.
Study shows that due to improper economic stability, health facilities, discrimination
among people increases. It leads to social cohesion (Northwood and et..al (2017).
These all factors have affected their social values and culture. It is the result these people
are been highly discriminated from others (de Andrade and et.al., 2015). This is due to their poor
economic and social condition. This has restricted them to interact with other communities and
people. The civic participation is also very low as compared to others. This is the reason of low
involvement of these people with others. So they are not getting social security and benefits.
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Moreover, it has cut them from other societies. Increase in social cohesion impact people mental
health and they start doing crimes and violence.
Neighbourhood and built environment- It involves various factors such as crime and violence,
housing quality, environment conditions, etc.
Study concludes that all the factors such as poverty, crime, economic stability, etc. leads
to increase in chances of crime, violence, etc. A person is highly impacted by its surrounding
environment (Cantor, Chandras & Pulgarin (2018)
These people are not having proper houses to live. If there are house then they are built
with very low quality materials. Besides this, crime and violence within this community has
increased (Garg, Boynton-Jarrett and Dworkin, 2016). It is due to poor economic conditions.
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Moreover, they live in places where surrounding environment conditions are very bad. This is
affecting their health adversely. They live in areas where there is no development or
infrastructure. This has restricted their ability to take basic services.
CONCLUSION:
From this assignment it is concluded that SDH are the conditions in which people are
born, live, work and learn. It refers to different functions and outcomes of life. Also, it is very
important to understand the place of living and impact on place on health of people. This
provides social as well as physical determinants of SDH. It shows that how indigenous
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community people of Australia is highly affected by poor conditions of life. This has impacted
their entire growth and development to a great extent.
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REFERENCES:
Books and journals:
Braveman, P. & Gottlieb, L., (2014). The social determinants of health: it's time to consider the
causes of the causes. Public health reports.129(1_suppl2). pp.19-31. Retrieved from
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-18096-0_147
Cantor, M. N., Chandras, R., & Pulgarin, C. (2018). FACETS: using open data to measure
community social determinants of health. Journal of the American Medical Informatics
Association.25(4). 419-422. Retrieved from https://academic.oup.com/jamia/article-
abstract/25/4/419/4569610
de Andrade, L.O.M., & et.al., (2015). Social determinants of health, universal health coverage,
and sustainable development: case studies from Latin American countries. The
Lancet.385(9975). pp.1343-1351. Retrieved from
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014067361461494X
Ferrer, R.L., (2018). Social Determinants of Health. In Chronic Illness Care (pp. 435-449).
Springer, Cham. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-
71812-5_36
Garg, A., & et.al., (2015). Addressing social determinants of health at well child care visits: a
cluster RCT. Pediatrics.135(2). pp.e296-e304. Retrieved from
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091743516302122
Garg, A., Boynton-Jarrett, R. & Dworkin, P.H., (2016). Avoiding the unintended consequences
of screening for social determinants of health. Jama.316(8). pp.813-814. Retrieved from
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2531579
Goldberg, D. S. (2017). The Social Determinants of Health & Public Health Practice. In Public
Health Ethics and the Social Determinants of Health (pp. 43-50). Springer, Cham.
Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-51347-8_5
Marmot, M. & Allen, J.J., (2014). Social determinants of health equity. Retrieved from
http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2014.302200
McClintock, H. F., & Bogner, H. R. (2017). Incorporating Patients’ Social Determinants of
Health into Hypertension and Depression Care: A Pilot Randomized Controlled
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Trial. Community mental health journal.53(6). 703-710. Retrieved from
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10597-017-0131-x
Northwood and et..al (2017). Integrative review of the social determinants of health in older
adults with multimorbidity. Journal of advanced nursing. Retrieved from
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jan.13408/full
Palacios, C. F. (2016). The impact of social determinants of health on hospital readmissions.
Temple University. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/openview/1af3d3619020481c43b44c4c07caf1e2/1?pq-
origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y
Rubin, I.L., (2016). Social Determinants of Health. In Health Care for People with Intellectual
and Developmental Disabilities across the Lifespan (pp. 1919-1932). Springer, Cham.
Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-18096-0_147
Online:
Social Determinants of Health, 2016. [Online] Available Through:
<https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topics-objectives/topic/social-determinants-of-
health>
Social Determinants of Health, 2018. [Online] Available Through:
<http://www.who.int/social_determinants/en/>
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