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Canadian adolescent perceptions and knowledge about the social determinants of health: an observational study of Kingston, Ontario youth

BACKGROUND: Upstream social determinants of health (SDH) have become widely acknowledged as lying at the root of poor health outcomes in Canada and globally. The Commission on the Social Determinants of Health maintains that educating the public about the SDH is a key step towards population health...

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Autores principales: Kenney, Kelly E, Moore, Spencer
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3765865/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23981811
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-13-781
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author Kenney, Kelly E
Moore, Spencer
author_facet Kenney, Kelly E
Moore, Spencer
author_sort Kenney, Kelly E
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Upstream social determinants of health (SDH) have become widely acknowledged as lying at the root of poor health outcomes in Canada and globally. The Commission on the Social Determinants of Health maintains that educating the public about the SDH is a key step towards population health equity. Little is known about adolescent perceptions of the determinants of health. Curriculum in Ontario is lacking in SDH content, placing a much greater emphasis on individual, lifestyle behaviors, such as diet, physical activity, and safe sex practices. Identifying a gap in SDH knowledge within the adolescent population is required to advocate for health curriculum revision to include SDH material. METHODS: Student sociodemographic information was obtained through a self-administered questionnaire. Concept mapping exercises were used to determine students’ knowledge of the determinants of health and the SDH. Knowledge was approximated by the relative number of SDH concepts present in student maps. Poisson regression analysis was used to determine correlations between sociodemographic characteristics and SDH knowledge. RESULTS: Concept maps indicated that students attributed their health primarily to physical determinants versus social determinants; 44% of maps contained no SDH content. Statistical analyses indicated that students’ SDH knowledge varied by their relative socioeconomic status (SES). CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that 1) there is an SDH knowledge gap in the adolescent population, and 2) an inequity in adolescent SDH knowledge exists across socio-economic factors. Current Ontario health curriculum requires revision to include SDH material, which will require greater communication and collaboration from both educational institutions and health agencies in Canada.
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spelling pubmed-37658652013-09-08 Canadian adolescent perceptions and knowledge about the social determinants of health: an observational study of Kingston, Ontario youth Kenney, Kelly E Moore, Spencer BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: Upstream social determinants of health (SDH) have become widely acknowledged as lying at the root of poor health outcomes in Canada and globally. The Commission on the Social Determinants of Health maintains that educating the public about the SDH is a key step towards population health equity. Little is known about adolescent perceptions of the determinants of health. Curriculum in Ontario is lacking in SDH content, placing a much greater emphasis on individual, lifestyle behaviors, such as diet, physical activity, and safe sex practices. Identifying a gap in SDH knowledge within the adolescent population is required to advocate for health curriculum revision to include SDH material. METHODS: Student sociodemographic information was obtained through a self-administered questionnaire. Concept mapping exercises were used to determine students’ knowledge of the determinants of health and the SDH. Knowledge was approximated by the relative number of SDH concepts present in student maps. Poisson regression analysis was used to determine correlations between sociodemographic characteristics and SDH knowledge. RESULTS: Concept maps indicated that students attributed their health primarily to physical determinants versus social determinants; 44% of maps contained no SDH content. Statistical analyses indicated that students’ SDH knowledge varied by their relative socioeconomic status (SES). CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that 1) there is an SDH knowledge gap in the adolescent population, and 2) an inequity in adolescent SDH knowledge exists across socio-economic factors. Current Ontario health curriculum requires revision to include SDH material, which will require greater communication and collaboration from both educational institutions and health agencies in Canada. BioMed Central 2013-08-27 /pmc/articles/PMC3765865/ /pubmed/23981811 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-13-781 Text en Copyright © 2013 Kenney and Moore; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Kenney, Kelly E
Moore, Spencer
Canadian adolescent perceptions and knowledge about the social determinants of health: an observational study of Kingston, Ontario youth
title Canadian adolescent perceptions and knowledge about the social determinants of health: an observational study of Kingston, Ontario youth
title_full Canadian adolescent perceptions and knowledge about the social determinants of health: an observational study of Kingston, Ontario youth
title_fullStr Canadian adolescent perceptions and knowledge about the social determinants of health: an observational study of Kingston, Ontario youth
title_full_unstemmed Canadian adolescent perceptions and knowledge about the social determinants of health: an observational study of Kingston, Ontario youth
title_short Canadian adolescent perceptions and knowledge about the social determinants of health: an observational study of Kingston, Ontario youth
title_sort canadian adolescent perceptions and knowledge about the social determinants of health: an observational study of kingston, ontario youth
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3765865/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23981811
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-13-781
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