What are the factors that influence health disparities?

Asked by: Chadrick Mosciski IV  |  Last update: January 15, 2026
Score: 4.4/5 (20 votes)

Factors that contribute to health disparities and affect health equity:
  • Social determinants of health.
  • Social and community context.
  • Health care access and use.
  • The neighborhood, school, and physical environment.
  • Education.
  • Income and wealth gaps.

What are the factors that contribute to disparities?

Beyond race and ethnicity, disparities occur across other factors, including socioeconomic status, age, geography, language, gender, disability status, citizenship status, and sexual identity and orientation.

What are the contributing factors to health care disparities may be?

Many factors contribute to health disparities, including genetics, access to care, poor quality of care, community features (e.g., inadequate access to healthy foods, poverty, limited personal support systems and violence), environmental conditions (e.g., poor air quality), language barriers and health behaviors.

What are the major factors that influence health?

The determinants of health include:
  • the social and economic environment,
  • the physical environment, and.
  • the person's individual characteristics and behaviours.

What factor is often considered the most fundamental cause of health disparities?

Fundamental Cause Theory

According to FCT, it is social inequality in access to flexible social resources (in particular, wealth, income, education, and racial privilege) that drives population health inequalities.

Beyond Healthcare: The Social Determinants of Health

16 related questions found

What are the five factors that can cause health disparities?

Factors that contribute to health disparities and affect health equity:
  • Social determinants of health.
  • Social and community context.
  • Health care access and use.
  • The neighborhood, school, and physical environment.
  • Education.
  • Income and wealth gaps.

What are the influences of health disparities?

Health disparities can also lead to increased healthcare costs, reduced economic growth, and greater social inequality. By studying health disparities, public health experts can identify the factors that contribute to them, the populations that are most affected, and the best potential solutions to address them.

What is an example of a healthcare disparity?

Of the 30 million uninsured Americans, about half are people of color, according to Brookings. This is an example of a health disparity. Health disparities are preventable circumstances relating to individuals' health status based on social factors such as income, ethnicity, education, age and gender.

What are the 4 types of influences on health?

Health risk factors are attributes, characteristics or exposures that increase the likelihood of a person for developing a disease or health disorder. Included here are four types of health factors: health behaviors, clinical care, social and economic, and physical environment factors.

What four factors are the largest influences on overall health?

Some grouped the factors influencing health into four principal forces: (1) environment, (2) heredity, (3) lifestyles, and (4) health care services (Blum, 1981).

What are the main determinants in health disparities?

Examples of SDOH include:
  • Safe housing, transportation, and neighborhoods.
  • Racism, discrimination, and violence.
  • Education, job opportunities, and income.
  • Access to nutritious foods and physical activity opportunities.
  • Polluted air and water.
  • Language and literacy skills.

What are the factors that influence health inequalities?

These factors are often influenced by wider determinants such as income, housing, environment, transport, education and work. Tackling health inequalities requires an understanding of the complex interaction between all these factors.

What are the biggest health disparities in the US?

Analysis across a broad range of measures of health finds that Black and American Indian or Alaska Native (AIAN) people fare worse than their White counterparts across half or more of these measures including infant mortality, pregnancy-related mortality, diabetes mortality, and cancer mortality.

What makes something a health disparity?

A type of preventable health difference that is closely linked with social, political, economic, and environmental disadvantage. Health disparities may occur because of race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, religion, disability, education, income, where people live, or other characteristics.

Which factor can lead to health disparities in Quizlet?

Health disparities generally occur due to differences in health care access among frontier, rural, and urban settings. Differences in the incidence and burden of diseases that exist among specific population groups can raise health disparities.

Who is most at risk for health disparities?

For NIH, populations that experience health disparities include: Racial and ethnic minority groups (see OMB Directive 15). People with lower socioeconomic status (SES). Underserved rural communities.

What are the 5 factors that influence health?

Determinants of health are grouped into five categories:
  • Economic stability and financial resources.
  • Food insecurity or not being able to afford healthy foods.
  • Access to, and understanding of, healthcare services.
  • The neighborhood you live in.
  • Your relationships with family, friends and community members.

What factors contribute to poor health?

Health is affected by the interaction between personal and environmental factors. Environmental influences include physical, socio-economic, cultural and political factors, as well as the availability of health services.

Which factor has the greatest influence on health?

Our health is largely determined by the social, economic, cultural, and physical environments we live in — everything from where we work and live to our level of education and our access to healthy food and water.

How can I identify health disparities?

Some domains within which such characteristics may be identified include race/ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation and gender identity, age, SES (including educational level, income, wealth, and occupation), country of birth, disability status, and geographic location.

What is an example of disparity?

The word is often used to describe a social or economic condition that's considered unfairly unequal: a racial disparity in hiring, a health disparity between the rich and the poor, an income disparity between men and women, and so on.

What factors contribute to health disparities for the elderly?

2 Genetics are estimated to be responsible for about 25 per cent of differences in health and function in old age, with other determining factors including aspects of the natural and physical environment such as air pollution and accessibility, risky behaviors such as smoking and inactivity, and individual ...

Which of the following is an example of a health disparity?

Examples of health disparities data include differences in life expectancy, health care utilization, and incidence of diseases.

What are the factors affecting health inequalities?

They include income, education, access to green space and healthy food, the work people do and the homes they live in. It is widely recognised that, taken together, these factors are the principal drivers of how healthy people are, and that inequalities in these factors are a fundamental cause of health inequalities.

What are the 3 main social factors that are associated with health disparities?

Low educational status and opportunity, income disparity, discrimination, and social marginalization are upstream factors that prevent good health outcomes.