Social Determinates of Health and Health Disparities During the COVID-19 pandemic
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In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the living conditions of people have largely influenced the severity, and mortalities resulting from the pandemic. Severities and mortalities from COVID-19 have been high among individuals living under abject poverty in overcrowded residential areas with poor sanitation and hygiene. Limited access to resources and malnourishment have also played a major role in severities and mortalities among COVID-19 victims. Among those that have suffered the highest mortality rate are from the boroughs of New York such as Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn. People with low economic status, food insecurity, and mostly relying on public transport as well as living in areas with poor sanitation have suffered even more (Galea, & Rollston, 2020).
Social determinants of health refer to the environmental aspects in which an individual is born, lives, attain education, recreates, grows spiritually, and ages. Such environmental conditions influence one’s health, ability to function in their daily activities, and the quality of one’s outcomes in life as well as risks. The conditions may vary from social, economic, and physical in one’s environmental settings such as school, places of worship, workplaces, and neighborhoods. In addition to the material credits, these environments and settings provide people such environmental conditions also affect people's ways of social engagement, their wellbeing, and sense of security. Therefore, resources such as safe and affordable housing, access to healthy foods, local health services, access to basic education, and safe environments that are free of health threats can enhance the quality of life and significantly affect population health outcomes (McEwen & Nies, 2019).
Other social determinants include access to job opportunities, social support, norms, and attitudes such as discrimination, racism, and lack of trust with the government, culture, literacy, and access to emerging technologies for instance cell phones, social media as well as the internet. All these social determinants partly determine our health depending on whether or not we can access the social and economic opportunities around us. The resources and supports must be equally available to our communities, neighborhoods, and even our homes (Moniz, 2010).
Health disparities are avoidable or preventable differences in the burden posed by a health crisis or a pandemic such as COVID-19. The socially disadvantaged populations in our communities are the ones that heavily experience such burdens in their attempt to achieve optimal health during the crisis (Moniz, 2010).
COVID-19 like any other pandemic has been largely a social problem than an individual problem. Since social determinants of health have a subjective contribution of up to 80% of communities’ health outcomes, they have played the role of critical predictors of the outcome of COVID-19 for an individual, and community as a whole. Both local and federal government agencies are observing that how people will respond and recover from COVID-19 or any other similar disaster will be a function of the poverty level and individuals’ living conditions. According to the Centers for Disease Control and prevention, the Social Vulnerability Index, which is the resilience of people when they experience external stress on their health such as COVID-19, Bronx County, NY has received a score of 0.9904. This score is almost 1, which is the highest vulnerability. In New York, Bronx County is the poorest borough and as a result, the community living there was among the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic (Murray, 2018).