Rural Living and Social Determinates of Health

Social Determinates of Health (SDoH) encompasses many factors including where one comes from and grows up, lives, works and ages and the environment around these specifics (World Health Organization [WHO], n.d.).Rural nurses are used to considering the conditions encompassed in SDoH in relationship to the health, health access, and healthcare of rural populations.In the past we have focused more on the individual and family for nursing care; however, we know that family, community, and society also are part of the environment in which nurses provide and patients receive care (or not).Focus on SDoH has the effect of highlighting those upstream or meso environmental factors where intervention may improve health outcomes, not just for the individual but for the broader community.Guilamo-Ramos and colleagues ( 2023) have developed a framework for a nurse-led way to address SDoH.Although not rural specific, this framework is board enough to guide nurses in many areas of practice.Literature notes the importance of SDoH and reducing health inequity as a social mandate for nursing in the 21 st Century (Thornton, 2018; Weeks et al., 2023).Swendener et al. ( 2023) examined housing quality for rural and urban locations and a number of other demographic details such as disability, ethnicity, and race.Two housing qualities indicators (incomplete pluming and incomplete kitchen facilities) were examined.The proportion of residents in rural areas was higher than that of urban in both incomplete plumbing and kitchen facilities.Rural dwellers who report disability had the highest proportion regarding substandard plumbing.Upon examination of ethnicity, communities of rural American Indian or Alaska Native rural dwellers were more likely to have both incomplete kitchen and substandard plumbing than their urban counterparts (Swendener, 2023).Rural as place