Achieving health equity requires interdisciplinary approaches that target social, economic and environmental factors that impact people’s health. These factors, known as social determinants of health, are the “conditions in the environments in which people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age that affect a wide range of health, functioning and quality-of-life outcomes and risks.”
These elements are often beyond an individual’s control. For example, the neighborhood you grow up affects what school you go to. The primary and secondary schools you attend significantly impact the quality of your education and the exposure you receive to information and opportunities. Consequently, these factors influence the of job you can get and your earning potential.
Research shows that this chain of events influences health, to the point where these social factors contribute to hundreds of thousands of deaths in the United States. For example, one study found that in 2000, 245,000 deaths were attributable to low education and 133,000 were attributable to individual-level poverty.
The neighborhood in which you live in can affect you in other ways too. Many under-served neighborhoods experience adverse environmental conditions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention focus on six environmental health themes that capture the impact of the environment on health:
- Poor outdoor air quality
- Contaminated surface and ground water
- Toxic substances and hazardous wastes
- Homes and communities that expose people to indoor air pollution, inadequate heating and sanitation, structural problems, electrical or fire hazards or lead-based paint hazards
- Poor infrastructure and surveillance to ensure the availability and safety of the built environment (which includes roads, parks, sidewalks and bike lanes)
- Global environmental health, including water quality and sanitation
Other emerging environmental health issues include climate change, sea-level rise and disaster preparedness. Maintaining a healthy environment is essential – the World Health Organization estimates that globally, nearly 25% of all deaths and the total disease burden can be attributed to environmental factors.
Achieving health equity requires addressing these social and environmental determinants of health across a variety of sectors. Public health experts recommend that stakeholders work together to address “the bidirectional linkages among science, policy and practice,” in order to design evidence-based, sustainable programs and policies that promote health equity.
Currently, a number of initiatives are using place-based approaches in which interventions focus on neighborhoods where residents experience many social and environmental barriers that lead to health disparities. At the same time, many are also implementing the health in all policy approach, which strives to ensure decision makers across non-health sectors consider the potential health implications of their policy decisions.
Here in the Tampa Bay area, there are a number of initiatives working to address various health disparities. The Tampa Bay Healthcare Collaborative (TBHC) is eager to discuss this work, and how we can leverage it to specifically address environmental barriers to ‘good’ health. Tampa Bay is in a unique position as a growing urban area that is vulnerable to the effects of climate change – we must begin these conversations now.
Join the TBHC Health Equity Committee on September 15th at 9:00 AM at the Juvenile Welfare Board located at 14155 58th St N in Clearwater to discuss how we as a region should address environmental issues as part of our efforts to move towards health equity. Register here.
