Health Factors

Patterns of health vary considerably over a range of scales: globally, internationally, regionally and within communities.

The key factors that influence whether one group of people are more likely to experience better health than another can be considered under three main headings:

Prevalence: the likelihood of a particular disease or poor health condition occurring in a specific location

Transmission: the ease by which disease or unhealthy lifestyle choices can transfer within a population.

Treatment: the rate of successful management of disease or a health condition in returning a person to a state of health.

Some key factors to consider:

Climatic environment

Certain diseases like malaria are dependent on the mosquito – the range of which is determined by year-round warm weather. As climate change continues, their range is expected to expand bringing malaria to previously disease-free countries. Conditions such as hypothermia are related to periodically cold climates.

Education

Levels of education can help influence what people know about a disease or condition, how to avoid it and how to treat it if it does develop. Procedures such as knowing to prepare raw meat away from fresh vegetables can prevent food poisoning.

Nutrition & Diet

The body’s resistance to infection or ability to deal with a health condition depend on how robust it is. In many countries the quality of nutrition leads to an absence of key minerals and vitamins resulting in conditions such as rickets – where vitamin E is deficient.

Water supply and sanitation

Open sewers allow diseases to breed rapidly, and unclean water supplies are one of the most effective ways of transmitting disease. Cholera was a feature of many European cities until the urban water supply was separated from sources of sewage.

Living conditions

Damp, cold accommodation is more likely to lead to lung diseases such as TB, whilst overcrowded conditions are more likely to lead to rapid spread of disease as is found in slums and refugee camps.

Demographic stage

Ageing populations are more likely to encounter diseases such as coronary heart disease, cancer and conditions such as strokes. More youthful populations are likely to experience higher rates of maternal health conditions such as anemia.

Sexual health

The prevalence of HIV/Aids in much of sub-Saharan Africa has many causes but contributory factors are the greater acceptance of multiple-partner relationships and the reluctance of many men to use condoms which could help reduce prevalence and spread of this disease.

Lifestyle & expenditure choices

Diseases and conditions of affluence have become more prevalent in advanced economies in recent decades. Lung cancer from tobacco use, heart disease from high alcohol use and diabetes from high sugar intake are consequences of affluence-choices and compounded by less active lifestyles.

Vaccination programmes

Preventative health care means acting to stop a condition arising. This can be achieved through vaccination programmes early in life (against TB, polio and meningitis, for example).

Medical intervention

The ability to see a doctor, attend a well-staffed hospital and get treatment to improve health conditions or deal with (or prevent) disease depends, in part, on the health service provision of a region. This is not just the number of health professionals and their level of expertise, but the organisation of the health system and its accessibility by all sections of the community.

Economic stage

The ability of a society to pay for doctors and nurses and other medical professionals; the hospitals, clinics and transport systems to care for people; the provision of medicines and surgical techniques; the sophistication of the pharmaceutical industry in providing drugs and medicines – they all depend, to a large extent, on the ability of a society to invest in them in a sustainable way that matches the changing needs of a population.