Social Determinants Of Health Care Essay

Public health and social justice are very much interlinked (Gostin & Powers, 2006). Public health focuses on addressing the health care needs of the community rather than the individual, and on prevention rather than cure (Blacksher, 2014). Social conditions is one of the important underlying determinants of health. In view of this, social determinants such as living conditions, housing, a unhygienic and polluted environment which depend on the socio-economic status of the individual have to be addressed by public health. The inequality in the social determinants of health is an important cause of the disparity in the health care status between the communities (Gostin & Powers, 2006, Blacksher, 2014). This disparity cannot be addressed by just improving the access, quality, and coverage of health care (William, Costa, Odunlami, Mohammed, 2008). Social justice requires that these disparities which are the root cause of inequality in health status of communities be addressed (William, Costa, Odunlami, Mohammed, 2008).
Public health should study the social causes for the disease and provide an input to the policy makers to initiate corrective
The interventions can target at changing behaviors that cause ill-health. An example includes the Nurse-Family Partnership Program (NFP). The NFP program targeted low-income adolescent or unmarried women. The nurses paid home visits during pregnancy and first two years of the child’s life in the intervention group while the control group received conventional pre and post-natal health care. The NFP program showed that regular visits by the nurses in the intervention group resulted in reduced rates of child abuse and neglect, reduced rates of subsequent pregnancies, and increased maternal employment (William, Costa, Odunlami, Mohammed,