What Does Social health Mean
We explain what social health is in a community, the factors that intervene in it and its impact on individual and collective life.
What is social health?
The concept of social health may not be as common to us as physical health or even emotional health, but it is as important as any of these. Social health is understood as the set of economic and social factors and conditions that influence the health status of individuals in the long term.
These are factors of community- based (rather than individual, as could be the inheritance genetics or personal lifestyle) that also affect vital way in the expectation of life or the vulnerability of individuals against disease. For this reason, the WHO studies these types of factors through the Commission on Social Determinants of Health.
Our social health is determined by the type of social ties that we can establish in our community , in the positive or negative influence they exert, and in the conditions of harmony or stress in which our social life develops. Factors such as:
- Exclusion and social marginalization.
- Conditions of employment.
- Public health programs and access to educational services.
- Gender equity and cultural discrimination .
- Urban living conditions.
- Nature of emotional ties and emotional life.
It is known that in toxic, impoverished, isolated and constantly impoverished social environments, social ties tend to deteriorate and become sources of suffering, ultimately having negative consequences for physical and mental health.
This does not have to do with the dynamics of personal improvement or self-help, but with the degree of healthiness of the social environment in which individuals develop.
For this reason, socially isolated individuals, estranged from the community or marginalized by it, have great difficulties for social and economic advancement, even as productive members of society . On the contrary, those who enjoy better social health have more possibilities for development even if they are on the same economic level.
The main contributors to social health in a nation are usually public health policies , as well as initiatives to combat poverty , inequality and segregation in its various possible facets.
Continue with: Social phenomena