Social Determinants of Health

I really enjoyed this TED talk. I think he made great points that describe how the field of occupational therapy is. I would define social determinants of health as the things in a person’s life such as where they live, where they work, where they socialize, and where they participate in daily activities, that affect their health in a negative way or positive way. As occupational therapist students, we have learned that it is always person first and not the medical problem. To fully help someone get better, you must know what happens in their daily routine to figure out how to help them. I loved that in the TED talk, the speaker said, “zip code matters more than our gene code”. He couldn’t have said it any better than that! As we have learned in class, the limbic system controls our emotions. SDoH can cause our limbic system to produce emotions like happiness for when someone enjoys walking through the park every day on their way home from work. They relate the park or environment that they see every day as something happy. That shows how the SDoH can have a positive effect to our nervous system. SDoH can also have plenty of negative affects to our health. As we heard in the TED talk, there was a lady that had awful headaches because of the place she was living it. It wasn’t her genes that caused the pain, it was her own apartment that caused it. I feel like the lady could have also been stressed because there was mold and roaches in her apartment. We know that the neurotransmitter norepinephrine is a stress hormone in the body. SDoH can cause a person to produce a lot of norepinephrine because of their environment.

I think that the program's requirements for service and professional development hours facilitate preparedness in us by having us informed in all aspects of occupational therapy. It is good to know the concrete facts, but it is also just as important to know how to work with clients. It shows us how to be personable and not medical.