Eat well. Exercise. Sleep enough. Manage stress. See your doctor. Build healthy habits. Yet healthy remains elusive. Because while all of these things matter, they are only part of the story.
Along with your individual choices, your health is also shaped by everything around you. Where you live, the air you breathe, the safety of your streets, access to healthy food, housing, education, healthcare, public spaces and emergency services can all affect your chances of being healthy. Collectively, they form the system of public health.
Health is a community project
You can make healthy choices everyday and still be negatively affected by the conditions you’d id not choose. Think about going for a morning run— an extremely healthy habit. But the experience and outcome changes depending upon where you are running. If you are breathing polluted air while running with heavy, noisy traffic besides you on an unsafe road, your healthy habit could in turn increase your chances of bad health. The same applies when you need healthcare. A good doctor matters, but so do emergency services, hospitals, roads, clean water, vaccination programs, food safety and policies that protect people from preventable harm.
This is why health cannot just depend on DNA, food, exercise and personal habits alone. Research on the social determinants of health shows that the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age have a powerful influence on health outcomes..
What does public health have to do with your everyday life?
Probably much more than you realize.
Public health can be working quietly in the background when drinking water is safe, food is inspected, vaccines prevent disease, roads are made safer, buildings follow safety standards or communities have access to parks and other healthy spaces. Much of this work is easy to overlook precisely because it works before we need it. However, when the system is broken or unable to work efficiently, then we notice, like, during infectious disease outbreaks.
What can you do?
Start looking at your neighborhood and notice everything that public health has done for you. Ask how is everyday made safer and healthier for you and your loved ones. Woke up healthy, went out and came home safely? This is public health in your service!
Think beyond your own healthy habits. Ask what makes it easier or harder for people around you to be healthy. Who has access to safe spaces for exercise? Where does healthy food come from? Are roads safe? Is public transport accessible? What happens during a medical emergency?
Next, you can contribute to your community by following safety rules, reducing litter, volunteering, supporting health-related causes, participating in civic life.
Become politically aware and pay attention to the health policies that affect your community.
And finally, health literacy matters because understanding health evidence helps us make better decisions and recognize health misinformation.
When you treat the world as other you break the system that keeps us healthy. We cannot build healthier lives by thinking only about ourselves. Our health is connected to the health of the people, environment, and systems around us.
Want to understand how your health is connected to the world around you?
In this episode of Health Savvy You, I explore why health is a community project, how public health shapes our everyday lives, and explain 5 tips in detail on what each of us can do to help build healthier communities that in turn make us healthy.
