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HEAL BLOG
This week during HEAL we watched the documentary, Unnatural Causes, which gave incredible insight into the hierarchical nature of health equity. We were able to follow along the lives of four people: a CEO, lab supervisor, janitor, and unemployed mother, and see how their respective socioeconomic statuses impacted their health. The connection between economic policy and health policy and how one's socioeconomic status is equivalent with his or her health outcomes was made abundantly clear. Someone who is of a high socioeconomic status, has greater control in their job, and thereby less stress has better health outcomes than their counterpart of lower socioeconomic status with a less controlled, high stress job. This relationship holds true not only when comparing the CEO with the unemployed mother but in every category in between.
We discussed how the Whitehall study correlates to this fact as well. During this study, it was determined that the lower the grade of someone's employment, the higher the rate of every major cause of death. This relationship was evident even in the intermediate categories along the gradation of socioeconomic status that is often depicted as a ladder. One criticism brought up during our discussion was that this documentary created separate categories according to socioeconomic status, race, and other identities. What the documentary failed to do was determine how the intersectionality of someone's identities may have accumulative effects on health. In other words, what are the accumulative effects of not only having a low socioeconomic status but also being a person of color, a woman, etc.? By no means do these conversations end here. This semester should be a great opportunity for further discussions around health equity and ideas about where we should go from here.
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