Health Inequalities

Health has been influenced by many factors such as poor health status, disease risk factors, and limited access to healthcare. All these factors are due to social, economic and environmental disadvantages. According to the World Organization (WHO) (2015), “the social determinants of health are mostly responsible for health inequities, which is the unfair and avoidable differences in health status seen within and between countries”

“Health is a state of complete physical, mental, spiritual and social wellbeing, and not just the absence of disease” (WHO, 1974). Health inequalities are the differences in health or healthcare opportunities in different societies this may be due to income,

Social class helps to deter the reasons for individual’s health and ill health. Social classes also help with understanding health and ill health, this is done through the basis of individuals lifestyle class, for example the lower class who work in the worst

Health education takes place within the context of social and economic settings. All programmes for health-related behaviour change have a cost in term of resources, money, time or social and economic factors. In this report I will be talking about Jamie Oliver approach the strength and weakness of his healthy eating approach. For example Jamie Oliver strives to improve unhealthy diets and poor cooking habits in the United Kingdom and the United States but the government spend a lot of money to campaign his idea and to promote healthier school meals.

These are a few potential links between social inequalities and the health of the population: income and wealth distribution, unemployment, the ageing society, gender and health, mental illness and suicide and disability and dysfunction. I am going to discuss each of these and see the health impact on people in each group.

In the 21st century obesity within the UK was starting to become a major concern, after the issue of smoking had been dealt with. In order to get a handle on the growing problem of obesity, the prime minister at the time released a new piece of legislation otherwise known as “Choosing Health: Making healthy choices easier”. This piece of legislation was designed with the

There are many different reasons why health inequalities exist due to many factors one extremely important one is social class. Socio-economic inequalities have been researched in the UK for many years. In the early 20th century the government started an occupational census which gave the researchers the opportunity to examine health outcomes of social class. The five class scheme was introduced in 1911 and a variation has been used since. In 2001 the National Statistics Socio Economic Classification replaced the older version. Social class is a name used to identify people who are similar in their income

Morbidity rates: People in class 1 suffer more from things which can be a result of their lifestyle like diet, alcohol and drugs; this is because they have money to spend on these

‘Understanding inequalities in London’s life expectancy and healthy life expectancy’ is a document that summarises data, that has been collected over various years, by the Public Health Outcomes Framework (PHOF) in regards to life expectancy and inequalities (London Knowledge and Intelligence Team. 2014).

Health inequalities are preventable and unjust differences in health status experienced by certain population groups. People in lower socio-economic groups are more likely to experience health inequalities than people in higher socio-economic classes. Health inequalities are not only found between people of different

classes are perhaps not as clear as they used to be. But it is just as

Inequalities in health still exist and are mainly blamed on the stratification system in the UK. The Black Report suggested there were 4 main reasons for this:

This essay will discuss ways in which a person’s socioeconomic class and his/her social situation can have an impact on his/her health, using examples. We believe that there is a direct link between socioeconomic/social class and health (Adler et al. 1994). I will be defining the key terms: socioeconomic and health, social class then proceed to discuss about how poverty, income, employability, environment and housing can impact on a person’s social situation and their health.

This essay will be discussing the extent to which social class and poverty affects health and illness. Firstly, what is social class? Each person’s perception of social class can be different; is social class defined by a person’s accent, the area they live in, or something as simple as their income? Project Britain describes social class as “The grouping of people by occupations and lifestyle”. (Cress, 2014). To find social class Sociologists group people according to common factors, they compare people and various criteria can be conveniently used to place people in social groups or classes. Next we ask the question what determines a person’s health, the NHS defines health as “Physical and mental, it is the absence of disease”. (NHS 2017).

Using the Williams (1997) ‘basic causes’ model for health inequalities, the role of Maori ethnicity in health will be examined. In particular, the significant disparities regarding cardiovascular disease rates in Maori compared to the ‘dominant’ group in society will be addressed. The model will be worked through backwards, starting with the health status of Maori relating to cardiovascular disease rates. The different levels of causation will then be focused on from the biological process and response level, to the surface causes and proximal pathways, then to social status, and then addressing the underlying overall basic causes including racism and colonisation.