The Importance Of Considering The Social Determinants Of Health

A child’s biology determines how physiological processes unfold and how organ systems adapt to outside influences. Biological response patterns, including responses to stress, novel situations, and primary relationships, can directly and indirectly influence other biological, cognitive , and behavioral processes. The term “biological embedding” has been used to describe how the external environment influences and shapes the biological environment , which in turn changes the way the individual interacts with the external environment . Due to lack of income unemployed people do not have access to health care.

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The impact of some body burdens vary across time and, to be understood, must be assessed at different times. For example, a maternal body burden of PCBs causes exposure to both the fetus and to the newborn via breast milk. Body burdens at one time may also impact measures of health in later time frames. The expression of certain genetic characteristics depends on the environment in which they occur. Thus, gene expressions that lead to a disease in one context may not lead to a disease, or may result in a different disease, in another context .

Here are some examples of major social factors that can influence your health. Sickle cell std testing disease is a common example of a genetic determinant of health. Sickle cell is a condition that people inherit when both parents carry the gene for sickle cell. The gene is most common in people with ancestors from West African countries, Mediterranean countries, South or Central American countries, Caribbean islands, India, and Saudi Arabia.

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However, inheriting two such genes gives the individual sickle cell anemia, a severe disease. Outside of malaria-endemic areas, sickle cell trait, the inheritance of one copy of hemoglobin S, has no known adaptive benefit and may be maladaptive. A single cystic fibrosis gene has been postulated to be protective against diarrheal diseases such as cholera, conferring a survival advantage to individuals who carry one copy of the gene . However, individuals with two such genes have cystic fibrosis, a severe disorder with altered pulmonary and gastrointestinal function. Other examples of genes with positive influence also exist in given environments.

• Family processes consist of the ways in which family influences operate to affect children’s well-being.
• It was also based on a model of health that was more disease-oriented than the multifaceted conceptualization of health proposed in this report.
• They include parenting styles, the provision of family environments, and health habits that may be beneficial or detrimental to children’s heath.
• We also include in this category two parental characteristics that affect parenting—mental health and substance abuse.
• Although the nature and degree of family influences on children change over time, both experimental and nonexperimental evidence indicates that the family continues to have direct influence on a child’s decision making well into adolescence (Larson, 1974; Romer, 1994).

As injury deaths continue to decline, nonfatal injuries continue to be important causes of child morbidity and disability and substantially reduce quality of life, especially among adolescents. However, it should be noted that data collection on nonfatal injuries is incomplete. Injuries are the leading cause of death among children between ages 1 and 19, accounting for more deaths than homicide, suicide, congenital anomalies, cancer, heart disease, respiratory illness, and HIV combined . Although the total number of unintentional injury deaths has declined by more than 40 percent during the past 20 years , the rates of childhood injury are much higher in the United States when compared with other developed countries.

Policies at the local, state, and federal level affect individual and population health. Increasing taxes on tobacco sales, for example, can improve population health by reducing the number of people using tobacco products.

Examples of such programming during particular sensitive or critical periods of development are coming to light. Outcomes associated with programming early in life may also promote health. This appears to be a special case of the more general phenomenon of how environmental influences can be embedded in biology during critical and sensitive periods of development.

In 2001, unintentional injuries consttuted 70 percent of all injury deaths to children and adolescents in the United States . Exposure to ultraviolet B radiation from sunlight exposure and the use of tanning equipment during childhood can result in substantial morbidity and mortality later in life. Health risks from exposure vary with skin type and include sunburn, skin cancer (the most common malignant neoplasm in the U.S. adult population), phototoxicity and photoallergy, skin aging, and cataracts. Approximately 80 percent of lifetime sun exposure occurs before the age of 18.

Genes determine the health of an individual from the moment of conception. It is important to understand how these things affect your health so you can take steps to improve them, and improve your health.