Sara and Amir

About this video

Sara and Amir are cousins, the same age, and both try to eat well and stay active. Sara lives in a quiet town with clean air, safe tap water and a park near her home. Amir lives beside a busy road full of traffic fumes, works long night shifts and has no safe place to walk. They make the same effort. Do they have the same chance of staying healthy?

Health experts call everything that makes a person more or less likely to be healthy the determinants of health. The World Health Organization (WHO) sorts them into three groups: the social and economic environment (money and social status, education, work and working conditions, support from family, friends and community, and culture), the physical environment (clean air, safe water, safe housing, safe roads and healthy workplaces), and the person's own characteristics and behaviours (the genes you got from your parents, and what you eat, how active you are, whether you smoke, how you cope with stress). WHO also names health services, and gender.

WHO says the social determinants of health are "the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live and age". Amir breathes dirtier air every day, sleeps in the daytime after his shifts and has nowhere safe to walk, and none of that is about how hard he tries.

WHO also says people are unlikely to be able to control many of these determinants directly, so blaming people for poor health, or praising them for good health, is not fair. Two things are true together: the place you live shapes the choices you have, and the choices you can make still help. This video goes with the lesson What Shapes Your Health in Knaph's Health Level 1 course.

Transcript

1. 0:00Sara and Amir are cousins, the same age. Sara has clean air and a park. Amir lives by a busy road and works night shifts. They make the same effort. Do they have the same chance?
2. 0:13The World Health Organization sorts what shapes health into three groups. The social and economic environment. The physical environment. And the person's own body and behaviour. Health services and gender matter too.
3. 0:30Health is shaped by where people are born, grow, work, live and age.
4. 0:41Many of these are out of a person's control, so blame is unfair. And the choices you can make still help.
5. 0:54Health is shaped by more than your choices.