Health is a balance of both mental and physical state of our body. Being healthy is not just about good physique, it also involves our mind and social well being. Health is quite variable and it is influenced by range of factors such as environmental conditions, health care system, Education, social and economic conditions. The Social Determinants of Health are the conditions in which people live that influence the outcome of people’s health.
Neighborhood and the build environment is where we live and it creates a huge impact on our health and well being. It helps to shape every individual lives and has lot of outcomes on resident’s health. Living in a good environmental conditions where there is an access of park, safe and clean neighborhoods, access to good foods options can help the community to have a healthy lifestyle. I have been living in Junction Boulevard located in Queens, New York for the past four years with my family.
The neighborhood around me is safe but not so quiet. At times, it becomes a bit of an ear popping because of the Fire Department that is stationed two blocks away from my house and the Police Station based right next to my place. Also we have some annoying neighbors who put loud music on late nights and weekends, which makes difficult for us to enjoy our privacy. Also exposure to an excessive noise can create health problems such as stress, poor concentration, fatigue due to lack of sleep and other serious issues like hearing loss.
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Due to high volume of vehicles in our neighborhood we are forced to double park the cars and every once in a month we have street cleaning. This causes the street to look unclean, compact and congested which makes unsafe for us to walk. Being a parent of a two year old toddler and taking him to the park is always a problem because we have only one small playground park only for little kids that is located in the center of the busy road.
The park does not have any safety gates for the kids and no pedestrian road safety, which terrifies me. In my neighbourhood, we donot have public park to enjoy outdoor or any physical activities. Instead, we have many fast food restaurants like Mc Donald, Burger King, Taco Bell and Kentucky Chicken Fried in our area that people go to eat because it is cheaper than other food. Due to the lack of good food quality, no public park in our neighborhood to engage in physical activities and fast food chain restaurants are causing many health problems such as obesity and other chronic diseases.
Also, economic stability also plays an important part in social determinants of health. It consists of poverty, food and housing affordability and employment. We have a mix of middle and low-income family in my neighborhood. There are only two grocery stores in our area and the quality of the food such as meat and vegetables are not so fresh and the food items are limited and expensive when compared to other supermarket places. For instance, the price of a small peanut butter bottle brand Skippy is sold in my local market store for almost $4 to $5.
Whereas, the same brand and size bottle of a peanut butter is sold in other places for $2.59 or $2.99 in other stores. Majority of the shops in my area accepts WIC and EBT card because there are many low income family in our neighborhood that uses public assistance to support their family. These resources improves the aspects of life and can create an important influence on people’s health outcome by providing food and other needs to low income people. Therefore, we need to improve the conditions in our community in order to have a healthy lifestyle.
