Essay
D1- Analyse how social and community factors influence health
- Module
- Unit 24 - Public health
- Institution
- OCR
D1- Analyse how social and community factors influence health
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Unit 31D1- Analyse how social and community factors influence health
There are many factors that influence our health such as our religion, our social-economic status and
even our age and gender. Such factors can have a positive influence or at worse a negative influence but
what about social and community factors? These factors can include many things, but how do these two
factors influence health? Well, below I will analyse how social and community factors influence health.
How social factors influence health
Social factors are things the effect someone’s lifestyle and health. Such factors could include educational
level, peer pressure, age, gender, family, and social-economic status. Such factors cannot only influence
your health negatively and positively but also the health of those around you. The community we are in
and those we surround ourselves with can again influence such factors, both negatively and positively.
These factors affect our ability to make healthy choices, afford medical care and housing, manage stress,
and more. But how do such social factors labelled about influence health? well, I will below tell you and
analyse how social factors influence health.
Peer
Peer pressure is another influential factor in health. Peer pressure is the direct influence on people by
peers, and it can influence health both negatively and positively and lead to very awkward and
distressing scenarios.
Positive
Peer support, peer pressure, peer choice and peer involvement can positively influence health vastly.
Peer involvement, peer support and peer pressure cannot always be seen as negative concepts. Having
family and friends making their own choices regarding diet, exercise and health itself can be influential
to others and in cases have a positive influence on health. Friends who make positive and healthy
choices for themselves, may influence an individual and encourage them to do the same. We see many
friends going on runs together, participating in healthy eating regimes and improving their health
together, because of such influence and the support provided when challenging yourself with the
support of your friends. Your peers can act as positive role models which can have a positive influence
on health.
Say, for example, friend 1 starts a go running and tells friend 2 about how good they feel after running
and that the results are beginning to show. Such modelling could then encourage friend 2 to start
running also to support friend 1, achieve such results friend 1 is getting and improve health. The
influence peers have are vast and while they may be negative, they may also be positive. According to
Healthline “Individuals, can promote positive choices and attitudes in their friend groups simply by
demonstrating those behaviours themselves. Positive peer pressure often involves more encouragement
and support than actual pressure or persuasion.” Positive peer pressure, influence and support can help
influence positive health and activity prevent ill-health and health-related disease and illness, because if
peers are doing something good for their health and influencing others, then better health can be
promoted. All in all, if positive peer-influenced is carried out then behaviours can be changed, health can
be improved, and life can be bettered.
,Negative
Indifferently to the positives of peer pressure and support are the negatives. Peer influence and support
can negatively influence health and is a common occurrence in adolescent years. According to
psychology today “Ninety percent of teens reported having experienced peer pressure, while 28 percent
reported that their social status was boosted after they gave in to peer pressure.” This high statistic
shows us the prevalence of peer pressure in teenagers, but how can such pressures and influence
negatively influence health? Negative peer influence and pressure indifferent from positive influence
could involve pressure to use cigarettes, drugs or alcohol, pressure to participate in risky behaviours,
distraction from learning, and other pressure that has negative outcomes. It has been identified that
many give in to peer pressure and do what their peers influence on them to improve their social
standing or become liked by others, but such pressures never usually lead to such improvements.
Peer pressure is a big challenge among younger and older people and can negatively influence health
lead to an alcohol or drug addiction, frequent participating in risky behaviours the avoidance of
education. Peer influence and pressure is in many ways classed as challenging behaviour and very
dangerous. Maybe taking a drug leads to adverse outcomes or participating in risky behaviour leads to
injury and so on. The normalisation of such behaviours is where addiction and dependency starts, which
could lead to life-long addiction or negative health, due to the complications frequent drug and alcohol
use bring including cancer, and dangerous bodily harm.
Negative peer pressure can influence and affect psychological aspects of health including mental health.
Negative peer pressure and peer influence can lead to awkward, risky, upsetting situations and decrease
self-confidence, distancing from family, poor schooling performance, and even the onset of anxiety and
depression. Without support from such scenarios and pressure, health can be negatively influenced, and
negative peer pressure could lead an individual to self-harm, engage in harmful activities and even have
suicidal thoughts. The influence of pressures is massive and they must be assessed to prevent such
negative consequences and health effects.
All in all, although peer influence may not always be negative, in some cases it can be and influence
health negatively, lead to poorer health in the future due to alcohol or drug use in the teens, lead to
serious life-threatening injury for participating in risk behaviours and even have vast negative
psychological effects to health, showing us that peer influence cannot just positively influence health but
also negatively influence health.
, Social-economic
Social-economic status is the social standing or class of an individual or group. Now your social-
economic status can influence health in many ways, both positively and negatively, depending on your
status.
Negative
Aside from social-economic status, social-economic factors and social class influencing your health
positively can also influence your health negatively. Social-economic factors linked to poor education
and poverty are hugely influential on health and predicting health outcomes and so on. According to
Imperial collage London, a recent study revealed that “low socioeconomic status (SES) had almost the
same impact on health than smoking or a sedentary lifestyle and was associated with reduced life
expectancy of 2.1 years, similar to being inactive” This study shows us that social economic status does
in fact influence health and that unfortunately, those with a lower status will experience negative or
worse health. But not all the time is such evidence true, some individuals of low social class end up living
long lives and have better health then the richer members of society, so does social-economic status and
factors really influence health? Well, yes, it’s a common trend that the lower-social class you are the
lower level of health you have, but it's all about how you choose to live your life and make do with what
you have. An individual of a lower-social class could, by all means, lead an active free lifestyle and
achieve good health, but ideally to achieve a good level of health income is a definitive factor, with
healthy foods being so expensive, no wonder the majority of the poor population have poorer health.
Social and economic inequality is an ongoing challenge in today's time.
Negative health as a result of low socioeconomic status is usually resultant to many factors such as
education, income, employment and even upbringing. The upbringing you have can negatively influence
your future and health. The upbringing you have could be very challenging, disturbing, difficult or poor,
which could have a knock-on effect on education etc. Those of low-social class usually have lower levels
of education due to struggling at school or the inability to afford to go to Uni or college, the cycle is
continuous. Poor education could then influence employment and mean getting employed in a
profession of low income, due to the lack of education, which can then influence the money you receive
at the end of the month, and then have a big knock-on effect to your health, as income, as it seems, is a
big factor that influences health. “the better off you are, the better health you have”.
So, we can see, how individuals find themselves in a low-social class and attain poor social-economic
status, that could mean all the worse for health. Social-economic disparities are linked to negative
health and poor-health related conditions. It is a proven factor that social-economic disparities are
linked to low birth weight, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and housing-
related ill-health and injury. The ongoing inequalities in society influence negative health greatly, in this
country if your poor your either left to fend for yourself or forced to receive very little benefit to live off
each month, no wonder the poor have such negative health.
All in all, social-economic factors and social-economic status can influence and affect health in many
ways. The evidence is widely suggesting that the poor have poorer health and the rich have richer health
which is in some cases true. However, these common disparities can be changed with more support for
the poor from the government in my opinion. Without a doubt, social-economic factors and disparities
can influence health, make disease and ill-health more likely and increase the big life expectancy gap.
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