Determinants of Health

There are many factors that influence the heath of an individual or the population. In a broad term one of this factor is termed Social Determinants of Health (SDOH). SDOH are the complex circumstances where people are born, live, grow, play learn, worship, work and age (heathy people. Gov, 2018a; World Health Organization, n.d.). In order words, these are broad range of personal, social, economic and environmental factors. The determinants are about individual place in society, this includes income level, educational level and type of employment. Over the years group of people have experienced racism, discrimination and historical events such as the black people. These experiences have detrimental effects on the health care needs of these group of people. SDOH is the main factor responsible for today’s major health problems in society including depression, hearth disease, diabetes and obesity (What are the Social Determinants of Health? 2018).

There are complex interactions between the SDOH. For example, low income will have direct impact on the individual or community accessibility to proper health care, lack of good food and thus increasing the burden on the individual or family. This burden is often translated into poor coping mechanism in the form of drug use and sometimes comfort eating of unhealthy food. Poor health can reduce the individual opportunities to have meaningful employment which in turn impact on the individual’s income. These factors interplay with each other and have a positive or negative effect on the overall health of the individual or population.

A communicable disease chain is the process by which pathogen of infectious agent is transmitted to another organism (Green, 2018). This model of communicable disease chain is presented by six links, infectious agent, susceptible host, reservoir, portal of entry, mode of transmission and portal of exist (Break the Chain of Infection, n.d.). All these elements most be presence for the spread of communicable disease in a population. To stop the spread of disease is by breaking the chain at any link.

Nurses are in better position in breaking the chain of infection because they are involved at all levels of prevention (Institute for Work and Health, 2015) The nurse can use preventive measures or health education that are aimed at breaking the chain and reducing the risks of infections in other people. These measures include adhering to proper hygiene measures (WHO, 2018). For example, in the case of contact precautions, nurses should always use the appropriate personal protective equipment disposed of immediately after attending the patient to protect the nurse and other patients from getting infection.