Corey Anderson's Unnatural Causes

In the documentary Unnatural Causes: In Sickness and in Wealth, many researchers discussed how socioeconomic issues play a role in the overall health of a person. They touched upon disparities, inequalities, lack of initiatives and overall power structure. One of those was Professor Leonard Syme who defined control of destiny as “ability to influence the events that impinge on your life.” Thus, he is saying that one has or doesn’t possess the ability to determine to what extent events play a role in their lives. Essentially, he is describing how the ability to control parts of life can affect someone’s health. The affluent have better abilities to influence how their daily life impacts their health. An example from the documentary

His job has him bouncing around from department to department and he has no choice in the matter because he’s not in management. Both him and his wife work two jobs but they do not even have a savings account. Corey mentioned that his neighborhood is unsafe but that his combined income is too low for a house. Due to all these stressors Anderson is more susceptible to health risks. The only vacation he could take was taking the bus all the way to Miami with his wife. All of this is a stark contrast to how Jim Taylor lives his

Adewale Troutman stated that he advocates “individual responsibility, but always within the context of social determinants” linking the two thoughts together. Fundamentally, he is saying that it is up to one to make their health within the means they have. There are aspects of life that people have no control over or don’t have the resources to fix, but there are still ways they can improve their health. Social determinants are conditions that people grow, work, live, age and the factors that shape their daily lives. If individual responsibility is solely focused upon then the quality of public health as a whole cannot be improved upon. If we focus on individuals only we would be neglecting the bigger issue at hand. This would be how can we improve health for all given the social disparities they face. Once a whole community has better education, health care access, employment, healthy food options, safe housing and so much more then everyone could thrive together. Instead of one or two people or even families improving thousands more will have a chance at improvement. Thus, it is better to improve the social determinants of a community as a whole instead of one person in that community bettering themselves. Working together to fix the aspects of said society that are negatively affecting an area along with everyone doing what they can to add to the improvement of life