Social Determinants of Health

As you may well know, social determinants of health play a vital role in advancing population health and health equity. The average middle class American over the past few decades has found diminishing income levels for the same amount of work which the 2008 financial crisis did not help with much. For individuals of low socioeconomic status (SES), the ability to afford nutritious food is not an option as readily available to them as those higher up on the socioeconomic ladder.

Some SNAP recipients tend to be the ones who have rather limited knowledge about the foods they consume (Speirs et al., 2012). When the average SNAP recipient goes into a grocery store to purchase food or even a WIC recipient for that matter, how is that individual to be sure that a bag of rice labelled organic is truly 100% organic as opposed to one that is not labelled as such? Better yet, how many SNAP recipients can fully understand that a bottle of juice claiming to be 100% natural but has high fructose corn syrup as an ingredient and made from concentrate cannot be wholesome for one’s health? Being able to read and understand the labels on food packaging is an important set of health literacy skills which low SES individuals tend to have little of and Speirs et al (2012) actually advice that health professionals owe it as a duty to appropriately advice individuals who patronize their services.

One of this week’s readings by Jennings et al., (2003) comments on how the World Trade Organization (WTO) classifies the right of consumers to have appropriate labelling of food packages as an infringement on free trade practices. The situation is not too different from what is happening in the US. In view of the role of powerful lobbying groups in our nation’s political process and the deteriorating health of a majority of Americans, the question we need to ask ourselves is this: could it be that the law of diminishing returns has begun to take a toll on our political process?

That the deteriorating health of the populace is an indication that placing corporate profits over human lives is negatively impacting policy? From a public health perspective, the application of market justice principles to the health sector is unwise at best and the sooner a restructuring is carried out the better off we will be as a nation; through a reduction in how much we spend on healthcare and improving the health of our citizens to match if not exceed other developed nations health indicators.