Your health is strongly affected by social conditions, also known as the social determinants of health. These are the social and economic factors that can positively or negatively influence people’s health. The social determinants of health include factors like: 

1. Education 
2. Income 
3. Working conditions  
4. Living conditions  
5. Early childhood development 
6. Food insecurity  
7. Access to healthcare   
8. Race  
9. Indigenous status  
10. Social inclusion 
11. Gender  
12. Sexual identity  
13. Disability  

These factors can be more influential to your health than healthcare or lifestyle choices. While our health behaviours are very important and we should do what we can to stay healthy, it is important to understand how social circumstances can impact our ability to live a healthy life.  

We suggest watching this video to understand how health can be affected by the social determinants of health.

Your health should not be disadvantaged by your social, economic, or environmental conditions. Instead, we should strive for health equity.  

Health equity means that everyone in a community has fair opportunities to be healthy, no matter what their age, education, income, race, gender, or other social and economic factors. To achieve health equity, we must address differences in health that are avoidable, unfair, and unjust.  

The term “equity” is often confused with the term “equality”. Equality means treating everyone the same, or “equally”. Treating people “equitably” means considering what each person needs and providing the right type of support. The illustration below shows that when we treat everyone the same (with equality), that some people will not get the amount of support that they need and be left behind. When we treat people equitably, everyone gets the support that they need to succeed. However, when we work together to remove barriers that create inequity, this allows us all to succeed without additional support. 

It is our goal at CKPHU to protect and promote the health of everyone in the Chatham-Kent community. By working with partners and community members we aim to improve the health of our community by creating healthy public policies and reducing health inequities. 

In addition to health equity, we are committed to:

Demographic data is information about the characteristics of a group of people. Demographic data includes things like:  

• Language  
• Ethnicity  
• Race  
• Indigenous identity  
• Sexual orientation 
• Household income  
• Religion 

We collect demographic information from our clients and community so we can understand who lives in our community and what services they need to live, work, and play in a safe and healthy way. We use demographic data to understand who is using our services so we can improve them for everyone.