In my last post I used the phrase “social determinants of health” and then kind of moved on. But it’s a big term that sounds more complicated than it is, so I wanted to break it down.

The CDC describes social determinants of health as the non-medical things that affect how healthy we are. Basically, it’s all the conditions around a person’s life. The CDC groups them into areas like healthcare access, education, your neighborhood, your job and income, and your community.

Here’s how I think about it. Imagine two kids who are the same age and pretty similar. One lives in a neighborhood with a grocery store full of fresh food, safe parks to play in, and a doctor nearby. The other one lives somewhere with no grocery store close by, no safe place to exercise, and a clinic that’s an hour bus ride away. Even if both kids have the exact same genes, their health is probably going to look different over time. And that difference doesn’t come from biology. It comes from their situation.

What got me into this was coaching youth sports for kids in under-resourced parts of Winter Garden. Some of those kids didn’t have a safe place to be active outside of our program. That’s a social determinant of health right there, and most people would never call it that.

The reason this matters is that if you only focus on treating people once they get sick, you’re ignoring the actual reasons they got sick in the first place. You can give someone medicine for diabetes, but if they still can’t afford healthy food, you haven’t really fixed the problem.

That’s the lens I try to look through now. Whenever I read about a health issue, I ask myself what conditions led to it, not just what treatment fixes it.