Social Determinants of Health and Community Well-Being Essay Assignment

Purpose: Rather than solely focusing on individual casual factors, structural, systemic, and community-level factors play a powerful socializing role in the well-being of community members. The purpose of this assignment is to help you consider how myriad upstream factors contribute to the development of socially just communities. For the purposes of this assignment, health is being defined very broadly to be inclusive of mental, emotional, behavioral, and physical health outcomes. In this paper, you will need to identify one health outcome of interest and describe how historical, socio-political, features of the built environment, legislative policies, and structural and systemic factors have contributed to the embodiment of this issue at the individual level. Possible topics for investigation include, but are not limited to: disparities in African American’s female-identified individuals rates of premature births, LGBTQI individuals experiences of social isolation in older adulthood, or high rates of opioid abuse in low-income individuals in rural mid-western communities. This assignment is intended to be a starting place for thinking about the interconnectedness between the structural and the personal and to center the importance of community-level strategies to achieve health equity and social justice. Paper Format: Present a graduate-level paper that has an introduction, brief description of your health outcome including the population impacted, presentation of at least three upstream determinants of this issue, and a conclusion that describes tangible strategies to effect change at the community-level. It is critical that you connect these strategies to your personal conceptualizations of social justice and the Social Work code of ethics. Throughout the paper, please demonstrate (and reference where appropriate) your knowledge of the required readings, lectures and discussions. Length: 3-4 pages, double spaced (excluding the reference page and figure), typed, using a 12-point font size and one-inch margins. Referencing Style: Follow the formatting style as described in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. Length: 3-4 pages, double spaced (excluding the reference page and figure), typed, using a 12-point font size and one-inch margins. See attachments for addtional details and outline.