Social Determinants in Health: The Impact of Socio-Economical Issues on Individuals’ Health Conditions

Background and objectives: Health, being as an important social and individual value, has many influences and consequences all through the social and individual levels. Individual’s health is one of those fundamental issues and a great target regarding countries development. Nowadays, we are witnessing changes in disease patterns from infectious to chronic in one hand and on the other hand, we can see a widening gap between health condition, life expectancy and death rate in the worldwide. Based on global statistics, chronic diseases are rapidly increasing regardless the fact that there have been remarkable achievements in health promotions. There are many kinds of differences between various countries or social levels in terms of health conditions, life expectancy and death rate. In order to determine above mentioned changes, comprehensive perspectives with biomedical orientations should be applied alongside the concentration on health social factors at the same time. The present study is aimed at investigating socio-economical issues on individuals’ health. Material and Methods: The present study is a review. UN and WHO databases, English/Persian databases containing ISI, PUBMED, MEDLINE, SID, reports by health organizations, books, thesis, magazines and journals concerning health policies in Iran have been scrutinized. Conclusion: Health is a multi-dimensional structure and can be influenced by several factors. In fact, provision, protecting and promotion of public health can go beyond the abilities of Health Ministry. In order to achieve a healthy society, it is needed to focus on social health factors and intersectional cooperation. Without any comprehensive approach to determine health and disease and replacing health based orientation with treatment based orientations, it is impossible to achieve appropriate level of health and development and will lead in wasting society resources.