• Primary healthcare and social determinants of health

Primary healthcare and social determinants of health

This article, published in PLoS Medicine, provides a background on the World Health Organization Commission on Social Determinants of Health (CSDH), established in March 2005, and considers the challenges facing it. It notes that, despite unprecedented global wealth and technological progress, health equity gaps are growing. Improved clinical care is not enough to meet today’s major health challenges and overcome health inequities, nor to meet global targets such as the Millennium Development Goals. The article also highlights how chronic illnesses form a growing burden in developing countries. Risk factors for these illnesses are often seen as “lifestyle choices”, but are conditioned by patterns of material deprivation and social exclusion.

The authors argues that ministries of health cannot transform social conditions single-handedly. However, the health sector can take leadership in advancing an approach to health policy that incorporates actions on the social determinants of health across government departments and the wider society. The article explains that the CSDH was created to enhance this understanding of health, and lists five key action areas it intends to work on: living and learning conditions in early childhood; employment conditions and access to labour markets; protection for people in informal employment; living conditions in urban slums; and key determinants of women’s health.

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