(no subject)

[electricland]

texaslawchick's recent post on health care put me in mind of this, which some of you may find interesting:

The Public Health Agency of Canada considers the key determinants of health to be:

1. Income and Social Status


2. Social Support Networks


3. Education and Literacy


4. Employment/Working Conditions


5. Social Environments


6. Physical Environments


7. Personal Health Practices and Coping Skills


8. Healthy Child Development


9. Biology and Genetic Endowment


10. Health Services


11. Gender


12. Culture

You may also be interested in the WHO's summary of social determinants of health (PDF), which has a similar but not identical list (they leave off genetic endowment, for instance, considering it important on an individual but not necessarily a population level) with graphs.

I tend to focus a lot on access to health care as if it was the only thing that determines health, but of course it isn't -- in fact it's far from even being the most important thing.

In unrelated news, I have no self-control -- HMV doesn't have the This Is Wonderland Season 1 set in, so I ordered it off Amazon. And they lured me with free shipping so I ordered Kathleen Edwards' Failer as well.