scholarly journals Social factors determining maternal and neonatal mortality in South Africa: A qualitative study

Curationis ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rose M.M. Mmusi-Phetoe
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Maternal Mortality ◽  
Social Determinants Of Health ◽  
Neonatal Mortality ◽  
Social Determinants ◽  
Determinants Of Health ◽  
World Health ◽  
Live Births ◽  
The Social

Background: South Africa’s maternal mortality ratio has increased from 150/100 000 in 1990 to 269/100 000 live births in 2015 against the Millennium Development Goals 5 (MDG5) target of 38/100 000, indicating slow progress in improving maternal health. The neonatal mortality rate was 14/1000 live births against the MDG4 target of 7/1000. The purpose of the article was to outline the socio-economic factors that determine maternal and neonatal mortality in South African communities.Objectives: To identify and describe the social determinants of maternal and neonatal mortality in South Africa. Method: A qualitative study using audio-taped individual interviews was conducted. The interviews included 10 pregnant women who were purposefully recruited from the antenatal clinic attendees in a public hospital. The interviews were conducted in isiZulu and later translated into English by the researcher who is fluent in both. Data were analysed using the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Commission on Social Determinants of Health framework.Results: Findings revealed that poverty was an underlying factor to the vulnerability to illness and death of the mothers and their neonates. Other determinants were found to be the nutritional inadequacies, neglect and abuse by male partners, HIV or AIDS, inattention to reproductive health and violation of reproductive rights, and powerlessness of women and health system issues such as poor quality and incompetent health care.Conclusion: It is apparent that poverty plays a major role in determining the health of mothers and neonates. This requires more coordinated multi-sectorial interventions to address both the social determinants and direct causes of maternal and neonatal deaths.Keywords: maternal mortality, neonatal mortality, social determinants of health

Barriers to Teaching Social Determinants of Health: Nursing Study-Abroad Programs in a Digital Age

2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 254-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-Peter de Ruiter
Keyword(s):  
Study Abroad ◽  
Community Health ◽  
Social Determinants Of Health ◽  
Social Determinants ◽  
Determinants Of Health ◽  
World Health ◽  
Health Study ◽  
Study Abroad Programs ◽  
The Social ◽  
Barriers To Teaching

The social determinants of health are the conditions in which humans are born, grow up, live, work, and age (World Health Organization [WHO], 2012). In nursing programs, this content is typically taught in community health courses. Another strategy for teaching students how to understand the social determinants of health is study-abroad courses. Budding nurses can learn how to assess conditions that influence the health of a community. Conducting this assessment in a culture that differs from the student’s own can help highlight what factors impact one’s own health. For the past eight years, the author has been teaching the social and cultural determinants of health to nursing students by taking them on 3-week cultural immersion/community health study-abroad programs. Destinations have included Ghana, Austria, the Netherlands, and Thailand. This article presents observations on how the teaching of social determinants of health has changed during the period 2008–2016.

scholarly journals The Social Determinants of Health in Military Forces of Iran: A Qualitative Study

2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammadkarim Bahadori ◽  
Hormoz Sanaeinasab ◽  
Mostafa Ghanei ◽  
Ali Mehrabi Tavana ◽  
Ramin Ravangard ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Social Determinants Of Health ◽  
Social Determinants ◽  
Determinants Of Health ◽  
Military Health ◽  
Military Organizations ◽  
Military Forces ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health Need ◽  
The Military

Providing effective health interventions and achieving equity in health need to apply the community-based approaches such as social determinants of health. In the military organizations, these determinants have received less attention from the military health researchers and policymakers. Therefore, this study aimed to identify and explain the social determinants affecting the health of military forces in Iran. This was a qualitative study which was conducted in 2014. The required data were collected through semistructured interviews and analyzed through Conventional Content Analysis. The studied sample consisted of 22 military health experts, policymakers, and senior managers selected using purposeful sampling method with maximum variation sampling. MAXQDA.2007 was used to analyze the collected data. After analyzing the collected data, two main contents, that is, “general social determinants of health” and “military social determinants of health,” with 22 themes and 90 subthemes were identified as the social determinants of military forces’ health. Main themes were religious rule, spirituality promotion policies, international military factors, military command, and so forth. Given the role and importance of social factors determining the military forces’ health, it can be recommended that the military organizations should pay more attention to these determinants in making policies and creating social, economic, and cultural structures for their forces.

The Social Roots of Health Inequity in Tunisia: A Preliminary Study on the Social Determinants of Health Inequity

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 576-593
Author(s):  
Ahmed Bilel KOTTI ◽  
Aicha CHERIF ◽  
Ali ELLOUMI
Keyword(s):  
Health Status ◽  
Social Determinants Of Health ◽  
Health Equity ◽  
Social Determinants ◽  
Health Inequity ◽  
Determinants Of Health ◽  
World Health ◽  
Tunisian Population ◽  
The Social ◽  
Preliminary Study

Addressing the Social Determinants of Health is critical if we truly want to achieve health equity. The World Health Organization’s Commission on the Social Determinants of Health (2008) recognized the need to broaden the understanding of these determinants among the general public to facilitate change in communities and improve the overall health status. Using the data from the Tunisian Health Examination Survey (2016), this quantitative preliminary study explored the state of social inequity in health among the Tunisian population using a quantitative statistical analysis that shed light on the relations between the SDHs (Age – gender – SES – Geographical location – Area of residence – and Educational attainment) and the self-rated health status. This preliminary study explored the current state of health equity in Tunisia through exploring the hidden patterns of social identity formation and power relation inside society. This preliminary study also pointed out certain aspects of health inequity in Tunisia as well as the social factors and determinants contributing to the status-quo. The findings of this preliminary study could be the basis of an ambitious academic work that will explore the intersection between SDHs and their impact on health outcomes in Tunisia that will be an asset in the process of implementing health equity policies in the future.

scholarly journals Bivariate Joint Spatial Modeling to Identify Shared Risk Patterns of Hypertension and Diabetes in South Africa: Evidence from WHO SAGE South Africa Wave 2

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 359
Author(s):  
Glory Chidumwa ◽  
Innocent Maposa ◽  
Paul Kowal ◽  
Lisa K. Micklesfield ◽  
Lisa J. Ware
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Health Behavior ◽  
Social Determinants Of Health ◽  
Social Determinants ◽  
Determinants Of Health ◽  
Sampling Weights ◽  
The Social ◽  
Shared Component ◽  
Behavior Characteristics ◽  
Shared Risk

Recent studies have suggested the common co-occurrence of hypertension and diabetes in South Africa. Given that hypertension and diabetes are known to share common socio-demographic, anthropometric and lifestyle risk factors, the aim of this study was to jointly model the shared and disease-specific geographical variation of hypertension and diabetes. The current analysis used the Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health (SAGE) South Africa Wave 2 (2014/15) data collected from 2761 participants. Of the 2761 adults (median age = 56 years), 641 (23.2%) had high blood pressure on measurement and 338 (12.3%) reported being diagnosed with diabetes. The shared component has distinct spatial patterns with higher values of odds in the eastern districts of Kwa-Zulu Natal and central Gauteng province. The shared component may represent unmeasured health behavior characteristics or the social determinants of health in our population. Our study further showed how a shared component (latent and unmeasured health behavior characteristics or the social determinants of health) is distributed across South Africa among the older adult population. Further research using similar shared joint models may focus on extending these models for multiple diseases with ecological factors and also incorporating sampling weights in the spatial analyses.

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