Social determinants of health

Social determinants of health are all of the things in your life that could affect your health. This is where health and wellness starts. Social determinants of heath are where we should start looking before we even look at the symptoms. Some social determinants of health include the clients housing conditions, socioeconomic status, transportation, food security/insecurity and employment status. These things all provide, or do not provide, resources that can help keep you well and healthy. Without some of these, people will have an increased risk of disease, lack of opportunity and less access to things that make them healthy.

Social determinants of health can also affect the health of your nervous system. Stress is one thing that is affected by social determinants of health and it ultimately affects several areas of your nervous system. Stress can be a result of things like unemployment, food insecurity, poor housing/work conditions, and low socioeconomic status. All of these are social determinants of health. Specifically, the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis, regulates your stress response. If you have chronic stress, your adrenal gland is releasing a lot of cortisol which causes your amygdala tissue to grow and cause extreme emotions and anxiety. This chronic cortisol release also can diminish function of the prefrontal cortex, and cause the client to have difficulty with higher functioning and planning.

Because UTHSC’s OT program requires their students to obtain a certain amount of service/professional development hours, students are able to go out into the community and see how people live so differently from one another. We are able to go to both upper- and lower-class neighborhoods and both well-funded and not so well-funded areas, and compare the two. Doing this allows us to be able to recognize and better understand how social determinants of health affect individuals differently and how important it is to ask our clients questions not only questions about their symptoms, but also the conditions in which people live, work and play. This ultimately will prepare us to go out into the field prepared to give our clients the best care possible. 

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