Social Determinants Of Health In The Community

I aim to explore the ever changing role of nursing in health care focusing on the social determinant of health in the community. I will focus on the vulnerable groups of people in society and analyse the factors that contribute to their poor health. There are many social determinants which lead to poor health for many people in the community. In recent years there has been a move towards more community based nursing. According to the Royal College of Nursing, community nursing is ‘Nursing directed towards communities or population groups as well as individuals living in the community. It includes assessment of the environmental, social and personal factors, which influence the health status of the targeted population. Its practice incorporates

Social determinants of health include housing, socio-economic status, education, social and community supports, employment etc. All of these aspects of a patients care must also be looked at. The social determinants are an essential part of patients care as quite often these problems can be the cause of illness for many people i.e. if a patient is be seen in primary or secondary healthcare regularly for recurrent chest infections then this may be due to a damp environment at home, lack of education etc. If these issues aren’t resolved then this patient will continue to have these issues. This is known as the ‘upstream downstream’ principle. In this cause the living environment and education would be the upstream issues which may not be as obvious to see however the chest infections would be the downstream problem. If this patient is only treated for the primary problem then in the long term will cost the state more and will have negative effects on their health. The travelling community are one group of people who often have very poor health outcomes due to poor determinants of health. They often have very poor living conditions, education and poor uptake on health services. Members of the travelling community have a much lower life expectancy than settled members of the community. According to the All-Ireland traveller health study 2010, the average age of a traveller man is 67.1 in comparison with the national average of 76.8. Quite often on traveller sites they won’t have clean running water, access to doctors, poor sewage facilities, education on healthy food choices, compliance to medications etc. Halting sites also tend to be overcrowded with furthermore contributes to poor health. Community nurses