Social Determinants Of Cardiovascular Health Essay

The Social Determinants of Cardiovascular Disease (CVD)

The overall health of the population can be due impart to the living conditions in which they experience, rather than traditional risk factors of health we first think of. The umbrella term social determinants of health (SDH) can be defined as: the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, and the wider set of forces and systems shaping the conditions of daily life.
Communities are sometimes largely unaware that social factors rather than medical ones, such as income, and employment status, shape our health. Our health is also determined by the health and social services we receive, and our ability to attain high education levels, food and safe housing, among other factors.
Social determinants of cardiovascular diseases are found largely outside the healthcare systems, social factors of cause-and-effect work with traditional risk factors within the health care system to determine ones overall health.

Stress and Employment
At the

Level of income shapes overall living conditions, affects psychological functioning, and influences health-related behaviours like CVD such as quality of diet, extent of physical activity, tobacco use, and excessive alcohol use. Negatively affected psychological functioning can lead to the desire to cope using costly and body-harming drugs, which in the end can mean more health issues later on, for example: “Legislation as it affects individuals can also be highly unequal. Taking high quality cocaine as a successful stockbroker in New York City is very different from stealing to fund one’s habit as an unemployed youth in downtown Washington DC. And the care and treatment available to such individuals will also be very different. The stockbroker will be able to afford the purer powdered cocaine, while the unemployed youth is far more likely to be taking crack cocaine” (Global Health Watch,