Space and Global Health/Equity in Health Care/SDH and Health Inequity

Social Determinants of Health and Health Inequity
There is ample evidence that social factors, including education, employment and financial protection, environment, living conditions (housing, basic amenities), poverty, gender inequality, social inclusion and non-discrimination, structural conflict, nutritional status and ethnicity have a marked influence on how healthy an individual is, how health equity is affected both in positive and negative ways. All countries – whether low-, middle- or high-income – there are wide disparities within the health status of various social groups. The lower an individual's socio-economic position, the upper their risk of poor health.

Let's take a glance at some examples.

 * There is a difference of 18 years of life expectancy between high- and low- income countries.
 * 85% of premature deaths cause of noncommunicable diseases occur in low- and middle-income countries.
 * The children under 5 years old are 14 times more likely to die in Africa than the rest of the globe.
 * Maternal mortality is a key indicator of health inequity - developing countries account for 99% of annual maternal deaths within the world. Women in Chad have a lifetime risk of maternal death of 1 in 16, while a girl in Sweden features a risk of but 1 in 10000.
 * Tuberculosis is a disease of poverty- around 95% of TB deaths are within the developing world.
 * There are alarming health inequities within countries, too- within America, African Americans represent only about 13% of the population but account for nearly half of all new HIV infections.
 * Health inequities have a big financial cost to societies- the losses linked to health inequities cost around 1.4% of gross domestic product (GDP) within the European Union – a figure almost as high as the EU's defense spending (1.6% of GDP).

== Global Commission on Social Determinants of Health == Global Commission on Social Determinants of Health CSDH has identified three areas for critical action to combat the health inequities. These include:


 * Improve daily living conditions
 * Tackle the inequitable distribution of power, money and resources: the structural drivers of those situations of daily life (for example, macroeconomic and urbanization policies and governance);
 * Measure and understand the problem and assess the impact of steps taken: expand the knowledge base, develop a workforce that is trained in the determinants of health, and raise public awareness about the determinants of health.