Question

What are social determinants of health? Explain how social determinants of health contribute to the development of disease. Describe the fundamental idea that the communicable disease chain model is designed to represent. Give an example of the steps a nurse can take to break the link within the communicable disease chain.

Resources within your text covering international/global health, and the websites in the topic materials, will assist you in answering this discussion question.

Answer 1

The 12 social determinants of health are income and social status,social support workers,education and literacy,employment,social environments,physical environments,personal health practices and coping skills,healthy childhood development,biology and genetic environment,health services,gender and culture.

Addressing social determinants of health is a primary approach to achieving health equity.Health equity is when everyone has the opportunity to attain their full health potential and no one is disadvantaged from achieving this potential because of their social position or other socially determined circumstance.Social determinants of health such as poverty ,unequal access to health care,lackof education,stigma and racism are underlying ,contributing factors of health inequities.The CDC is commited to achieving improvements in peoples lives by reducing health inequities.Health organizations,institutions and education programs are encouraged to look beyond behavioural factors and address underlying factors related to social determinants of health.

The presence of a pathogen does not mean that an infection will occur.Infection occurs in a cycle that depends on the presence of all of the following elements which includes

• An infectious agent or pathogen.
• A reservoir or source for pathogen growth.
• A port of exit from the reservoir.
• A mode of transmission.
• A port of entry to a host.
• A susceptible host.

An infection can develop if this chain remains uninterrupted.Preventing infections invoves breaking the chain of infection.

Inorder to break the chain of infection,the nurse could focus into the susceptible host,which is a part of chain of infection.it is done through immunizations,treatment of underlying disease,health insurance and patient education.