6.Human beings live in societies. Our social environment is an important factor in our individual health.Explain
Answers
1
Although analytically distinct, physical and social environments may also influence and reinforce each other: for example, physical features related to walkability may contribute to social norms regarding walking, which may in turn promote more walkable urban designs and community planning.
2
Much early work on the spatial patterns of health used variables such as aggregate summaries of area socioeconomic or race/ethnic composition or measures of residential segregation by various attributes as proxies for a range of broadly defined environmental factors that may be relevant to health (see, e.g., Diez Roux and Mair, 2010). The identification of causal effects using these aggregate summaries raises a number of methodological challenges and does not allow one to identify the specific environmental attributes that may be relevant. More recent work has attempted to identify the specific environmental factors that may be important to specific health outcomes, as well as the pathways through which these factors may operate.
3
The environment can also be considered on a larger geographic scale, especially in seeking explanations for cross-national health differences. For example, the health of some nations is affected by their geography or climate.
4
Although in the U.S. context a number of studies have reported associations of local access to healthy foods with diet, some studies have not detected such associations (Cummins et al., 2005; Pearce et al., 2008). An important difficulty in comparing results across countries is that the proxy measure for the local food environment is often the type of food stores or restaurants available (such as supermarkets or fast food outlets), but the extent to which these typologies reflect relevant differences in the foods actually available to consumers may differ significantly across countries.
5
Studies that compare the effects of built environment features across countries are limited and inconclusive. One recent review found that access to open space (parks and other green spaces) in neighborhoods was associated with physical activity levels in both the United States and Australia (Pearce and Maddison, 2011).
6
Other factors that are also frequently discussed, such as social norms, have been more difficult to study because of a variety of methodological and data challenges.
7
As noted in Chapter 6, divorces and single-parent households have become more prevalent in the United States over time than in other high-income countries.