Demographics: Social Determinants Of Health

For every person and their specific sets of demographics, certain social determinants of health affect them in different ways. My character was a heterosexual woman of colour, living under the poverty line. This demographic is very common in Canada and 28% of women of a visible minority were living in poverty in 2011 (Chui and Maheux, 2015). Throughout the course of her life she was affected time and time again by her socioeconomic status. The two main determinants that caused the biggest loss of health, and eventually her death, were emergency situations and health care. If she had not lived under the poverty line, these determinants would have had a significantly less impact on her health. When put through tragedies such as; water crisis’,
When limited money is available, some health services are simply not worth the price. In childhood, my character was raised with low nutrition and low activity levels. The low nutrition stems from not being able to afford enough food and the food that is affordable is unhealthy. Without a healthy balanced diet there is an increased risk for diabetes, high blood pressure, and food allergies (CWP, 2011). This is also combined with low activity levels because my character’s family could not afford to put her in extracurricular activities or sports. As she matured into adolescence, her nutrition and activity levels didn’t change and she began smoking. This is unsurprising because people under the poverty line at 20% more likely to smoke than the people in the highest socioeconomic standing (Corsi et al., 2013). The biggest effect on my character for this determinant was when she became pregnant. There are statistics that show that people who are in a lower socioeconomic status are at a higher risk of getting pregnant as an adolescent (CDC, 2016). This was a big event in her life because she was unable to afford an abortion and ended up having to give her baby up for adoption. This had a big impact on my character’s mental health and to make things worse she could not afford any therapy to help with that either. This lead to my character developing mental
More specifically, the emergencies that she ended up in and her general health care throughout her life where the major two determinants that ended up causing her death. These same determinants affect every person in this demographic throughout Ontario and this is obvious through each example discussed. Emergency situations are bad enough as it is but with increased financial pressure surrounding them this can make the events go from problematic to deadly. This is what happened with my character and I’m sure it has happened with many real life Canadians. Growing up poor and having limited access to health resources also impacts health of many kids in Ontario and this is why schools put programs into place to attempt to combat the issues. Overall, these determinants resulted in the death of my character and this is occurring in real life as well. Simulations like the one we performed can be very useful to society in solving the issues that