Importance of social determinants of health

Discuss About The Distribution Of Health Literacy Strengths.

Social determinants of health can be described as the different economic as well as social conditions that have the capacity to influence the health conditions of people living in the nation. Researchers have described these determinants as health promoting factors that are present in one’s own living and working conditions unlike the individual risk factors like the behavioral and genetic factors that have the capability to influence the occurrence of disorders or diseases (Couture et al., 2017). Present trends in healthcare industry are advising the healthcare professionals to address the social determinants of health by following the bio-psychosocial models of care rather than following the biological model of carte that only focuses on the biological determinants. This approach is considered to be an effective way by which health equity can be maintained in the nation without any gap in health status of different cultural groups in the nation (Betancourt et al., 2016).   A large number of social determinants of health have been identified by researchers like poverty, unequal access to care, different socio-economic status of people, lack of education, stigma, racism, poor environmental conditions, lack of employment and many others. This assignment will mainly portray the importance of health literacy as one of the most important of social determinants that is affecting the health conditions of people all over the nation of Australia.

World Health Organization defines health literacy as the personal characteristics as well as different types of social resources that are required by individuals of a nation as well as different communities within the nation for effectively accessing, understanding, appraising and thereby using information and services for making proper decisions about health. Often different experiments conducted by researchers to determine the importance of this factor in the health of individuals have found lower health literacy skills have been responsible for bringing long-term health conditions that limit life and even make it difficult to manage medications (Sorensen et al., 2015). Such studies have also shown that in older people, lack of the skills of health literacy ensures earlier mortality. Moreover, people who have lower health literacy skills are seen to rate their health condition to be poor and exhibits more diverse lifestyle choices.

Health literacy has been seen to share strong associations with that of education, socioeconomic status as well as employment and deprivation of the area of settlements. Therefore, researchers have rightly considered them as a social determinant of health. However, unlike other factors that determine health, health literacy has the likelihood of getting subjected to alterations and modifications at a much rapid rate by introductions of effective interventions that are based on communications by helping in the development of skills in low literate people. Healthcare researchers have been able to establish a number of indicators by which they will be able to successfully identify rates of low health literacy within a community, in a nation (Batterham et al., 2016). These would include non-compliance of the individuals with health regimes, overuse-underuse-misuse of the health care systems. Reoccurrence of the same problem, over-representation of the vulnerable population within the acute care facilities are also other two indicators. Poor medication management and difficulty in making informed decisions are the other indicators of low health literacy within the communities (Guzys et al., 2015).

Definition of health literacy according to the World Health Organization

Lower health literacy of the people has been seen to contribute to not only poor health but also able to affect the capability of self-management o chronic conditions effectively. This in turn results in repeated hospitalizations and unnecessary expenditure of finance on healthcare resources. This not only affects the economic condition of the patients but also results in destruction of healthcare resources that can be used effectively for other chronic ailments of other patients (Heihman et al., 2015). Increased usage of inappropriate care, increased inpatient as well as ER hospitalizations and increased costs are the ultimate outcomes of poor health literacy of people of the nation. Some studies that have conducted extensive researches have shown that people demonstratinglow health literacy have an increased likelihood to skip recommended preventative care for example mammograms and flu shots. They are also seen to suffer from chronic disorders and are less likely able to manage the situations effectively. It has been found that individuals who are suffering from diabetes, asthma, high blood pressure, AIDS and many others and have low health literacy, they are seen to have less knowledge about their condition and how to manage such conditions effectively. Such people with low health literacy are also seen to be exposed to increased rates of avoidable hospitalizations. Such patients are seen to have more uses of the inpatient and emergency treatments and admissions (Beauschamp et al., 2015). Another interest fact that was also seen to have come up in the studies is that such people with low health literacy are seen to utilize healthcare services that are normally planned and aimed for treating complications of illness. They are less likely engage in utilization of the healthcare services that are aimed mostly at the preventing of the complications of the different illness.

Important researches have been conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which have provided evidence for more than 59% Australians facing difficulty with basic skills, needed for self management of health.  The most interesting fact is that many of the Australian faces huge amount of issues in locating information present on the bottle of the of the medicines such as, the permissible number of days for which the prescribed medicines could be consumed, or indicators or labels that pertain to one third marking on the medicine container. Only 41percent of the Australian are seen to have adequate to high level of health literacy. This leaves 60% of the population of the nation to be having low level of health literacy where they are unable to understand, access, evaluate and thereby effectively communicate health information to promote, maintain and improve health. Researchers have even confirmed that low health literacy act as a statistically independent risk factor that deteriorates health status (Bodur et al., 2017). They have also stated that increased mortality rates that stems from inadequate  health literacy is another risk factor that creates similar adverse effects, when compared to chronic disorders, regardless of controlled variable such as, race, gender, age, health status, income, health behaviors, health access, and psychological status.

Indicators of low health literacy

People with limited health literacy also face difficulty in understanding and utilising health information such as, instructions for medications, advice on self-care, instructions on the food labels, instructions on medications as well as on safety warnings. They also face direct effects like the accessing of services that support their health. They also fail to navigate effectively through a complicated healthcare system and are not able to interact with health care providers effectively (Haun et al., 2015). They are more prone to accidents when they do not state the fact to the healthcare providers that they have not understood due to self-respect and self-esteem and in turn, it results in repeated hospitalizations and poor quality health care or longer stays t hospitals. Some of the indirect effects that had been found out by the researchers state that they are also seen to suffer from poor quality housing, inadequate access to proper food supply, unsafe working environments, experiences social exclusion and isolation, and many others (Dingenmans et al., 2018). They are also seen to encounter stress in daily living. Furthermore, they also report a sedentary lifestyle with little or no physical activity, poor diet patterns, and smoking. They also face barriers related to fostering development of their health and wellbeing during the early years are more likely to incur higher healthcare costs.

Therefore, it becomes one of the most important aspects that the health department of the government put importance to and develop reforms and policies that will be aimed at developing health literacy of the nation. The policies and initiatives that will be developed will mainly be based on the covering the four important aspects of health literacy. Initiatives that would be implemented should be such that it would mainly help people to develop the basic health competencies along with different forms of health protecting, health promoting and diseases preventing barriers with proper self-care. Patients should be competent enough for navigating the health system, thereby acting as active and effective partners to professionals (Hersh et al., 2015).  Consumers should display competency for making important health decisions, related to the selection and use of goods and other services. They should be able to act upon consumer rights if necessary. They should also develop civic and cultural literacy and citizen competencies by displaying presence of informed voting behaviors, and adequate knowledge of their health rights. Advocating major health issues and being responsible members of health  and patient organizations are also imperative. It should be taken care of that the outcomes of the initiatives and the health policies should ensure that each and every people of the nation is able to find, understand and thereby use information which are required by them to stay healthy (Halverson et al., 2015). They should also ensure that the people are getting the services and help they need to develop their health literacy and are successful in making choices that promotes health safety. They should be able to advocate for personal health needs and have more control over the factors that promote a good health.

Negative outcomes of low health literacy

Therefore, from the entire discussion, one can come to a conclusion that  health literacy is intrinsically associated with both an individual as well as a community’s social and economic context and is thereby considered as one of the most important social determinants of health. They are seen to be associated with a large number of negative outcomes not only on the health status of the individuals but are more likely to make use of emergency health services, be hospitalized and incur high healthcare costs. They are less likely show compliance with medicines and with the use of preventive services. Therefore, it becomes extremely important for the health department of the government to take active initiatives for implementation of strategies by that this issue can be handled and hence the nation can achieve high quality health status.

References:

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