Chapter 150 - Patterns

Understanding patterns of health and disease requires that the focus in public health is not only on personal behaviors, biological traits and specific risks but also on the characteristics of the social and physical human environment that shape human experience. The surroundings in which people live affect their health. Individuals and populations are embedded within social, political and economic systems that shape behaviors and offer or constrain access to resources necessary to maintain health. Recognition that health is a product of the antecedent biological evolution interacting with current social and environmental conditions facilitates identification of social and environmental determinants that might be amenable to community interventions and can lead to improved health outcomes.