Zip code over genetic code. Only a fraction of what happens in the healthcare setting determines a patient’s health and their health outcomes so it’s only right to talk about Social Determines of Health.
SDH can easily be at the center of public health and the reason why there are drastic differences in healthcare access and healthcare disparities. We can make all the interventions we want, prescribe the most efficacious drugs, and counsel away…but if we don’t address these are we missing a huge part of the solution?
Think about this…a child born to a single parent that wasn’t able to finish high school. They are more likely to live in an environment that has barriers to their health: lack of safety and food access, environmental stressors such as subpar housing, exposure to environmental toxins, lack of playgrounds and sidewalks, and low health-literacy.
ALL of these have been shown through and through to increase factors such as readmission rates, noncompliance, and contribute to chronic disease development.
Have you every heard of SDH? What’s your experience in learning and/or addressing it?
(Sources: CDC, AAFP, AHA, KFF)
