Determinants of Health Western Governors University
D568 Social Determinants of Health
Emily Davis 1/1/2025
Task 2
A1 The population that I chose for this task is black women. Women
of color are at risk for many health disparities due to their physical,
metabolic, and hormonal changes, including pregnancy; and the built,
chemical, and emotional environments around them. “Racism, a
driving force of social determinants of health, exacerbates this
susceptibility by affecting exposure to both chemical and
nonchemical stressors to create women’s health disparities (Smarr et
al., 2024).” Chemical and nonchemical stressors could include things
like exposure to chemicals, racial inequity stress, and racist beauty
norms such as personal care products targeted toward women of
color.
A2 Social determinants of health are the environmental conditions
in which people are born, educated, live, grow, work, and age. They
are the nonmedical factors that affect health outcomes (WGU, 2024).
Three social determinants of health that affect women of color include
healthcare access and quality, social and community context, and
neighborhood and built environment. More specifically, women of
color experience a lack of quality healthcare due to persistent racism
and inaccurate stereotyping. They experience unequal social
conditions and problematic cultural norms like body image,
upbringing, and a lack of ethnic social influencers. Their neighborhood
and built environment differ from white women due to low- income
communities often being packed and suffering from pollutants like
mold, pests, chemical toxins, and a lack of access to healthy hair and
skin care due to toxic products being much cheaper than organic
products. “Facilities that emit hazardous toxins, such as toxic
landfills, oil refineries, and chemical plants, are disproportionately
located in predominantly Black, Latinx, and Indigenous
neighborhoods (Ray, 2021).”
A3 The three social determinants of health mentioned in part A2
include healthcare access, lack of ethnic social influencers, and
, subjectification to chemicals and toxins. These social determinants of
health contribute to women of color by negatively affecting their
health outcomes in the following ways: lack of healthcare access
contributes to increased health problems: black women are more
likely to experience obesity, hypertension, preterm birth, pregnancy-
related death, uterine fibroids, and fertility care and less