Transcript Women’s Health Issues HLTH 25

Health Equity
“Providing all people with fair
opportunities to attain their full health
potential to the extent possible.”
Braveman, 2006
Health Equity & Prevention Primer
Available at www.preventioninstitute.org
What is Health
• How do we define what health means……
What is Health?
“Health is a state of complete physical,
mental and social well-being and not
merely the absence of disease or
infirmity.”
Preamble to the Constitution of the World Health Organization as
adopted by the International Health Conference, New York, 19-22
June, 1946; signed on 22 July 1946 by the representatives of 61
States (Official Records of the World Health Organization, no. 2, p.
100) and entered into force on 7 April 1948.
And…
“Health is not a condition, it is an
adjustment. It is not a state, but a process.
The process adapts the individual not only
to our physical, but also our social,
environments" (President’s Commission,
1953, p. 4)
Prerequisites for health
• What are they?
• What do we need in order to maximize our
health?
Prerequisites for health
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Safe and secure food
Safe and stable housing
Adequate income
Access to education
Access to health care
Stable ecosystem
Sustainable resources
Peace
Social Justice
Social Determinants of Health
The circumstances in which people are
born, grow up, live, work, and age, as well
as the systems put in place to deal with
illness. These circumstances are in turn
shaped by a wider set of forces:
economics, social policies, and politics.
(Social Determinants of Health Key
Concepts , World Health Organization)
Social Determinants of Health
So is everyone in our society
• Equally healthy?
• Examples…….
Health Disparities
“Differences in the incidence,
prevalence, mortality, and burden of
diseases and other adverse health
conditions that exist among specific
population groups in the United States”
National Institute of Health
“Disease is a socially produced
phenomenon…Critical perspectives on
emerging infections must ask how
large-scale forces come to have their
effects on unequally positioned
individuals.”
Paul Farmer, Infections and Inequalities
What are Public Health
Interventions?
• Preventative rather than curative
• Population-level, rather than individual-level
• Prevent rather than treat a disease through
surveillance of cases and the promotion of
healthy behaviors.
• In addition to these activities, in many cases
treating a disease may be vital to preventing it in
others; distribution of condoms are an example
of a public health measure
• Evidence-based
Structural changes
• are……new or modified programs,
practices or policies
• that are logically linkable to HIV
transmission and acquisition and
• can be sustained over time, even when
key actors are no longer involved.
Structural Interventions
These changes may directly or indirectly
impact individuals.
• Structural interventions for HIV prevention aim to
modify the social, economic and political
structures and systems in which we live.
• Rather than attempting to change individual
behaviors, structural interventions aim to change
environments