Health Promotion Strategies Using the Ecological Model
This paper examines health promotion strategies for a middle-class family through the lens of social determinants of health (SDOH), including race, class, religion, and attitudes toward healthcare. It discusses how income, education, housing, and food access contribute to health disparities, and highlights the CDC's Healthy Communities Program as an example of community-level intervention. The paper recommends age-appropriate screenings for each family member and proposes the ecological model as a guiding framework. By addressing individual behaviors, environmental factors, and community-level policy advocacy, the ecological model offers a comprehensive approach to improving and sustaining long-term family health outcomes.
- Introduction to Social Determinants of Health: Family SDOH profile and healthcare attitudes
- SDOH and Health Disparities: Population-level disparities and CDC program evidence
- Age-Appropriate Health Screenings: Recommended screenings by family member age
- The Ecological Model for Family Health Promotion: Rationale for selecting the ecological model
- Applying the Ecological Model to the Family: Multi-level ecological model application strategy
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper grounds its recommendations in a specific family case study, making abstract SDOH concepts concrete and applied.
- It moves logically from defining SDOH to identifying disparities, then to practical screening recommendations, and finally to a theoretical framework — creating a clear progression from diagnosis to intervention.
- Citation of authoritative sources (CDC, peer-reviewed journals) lends credibility to each claim about health determinants and model selection.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates applied theoretical reasoning by selecting and justifying the ecological model as the most appropriate framework for the family's specific circumstances — particularly the presence of young children and the family's distrust of formal healthcare. This shows the writer's ability to match theory to context rather than applying a framework generically.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens by profiling the family's SDOH factors, then broadens to discuss population-level health disparities. It transitions to practical screening recommendations tailored by age, then introduces and justifies the ecological model. The final section applies the model to the family at individual, environmental, and community levels — a tightly structured movement from context → evidence → recommendation → application.
Introduction to Social Determinants of Health
The Z family's social determinants of health (SDOH) include their race, class, religion, and overall health status. The family is white, middle class, and has good health overall. Their diet is healthy, but the parents do not get enough exercise. The father has prostate issues but does not want to see a doctor. The family entrusts health matters largely to God through prayer, and relies on their own judgment when making health decisions. They hold a general distrust of the healthcare establishment, viewing the industry as beholden to corporate interests that prioritize profits over people. These factors all contribute to the family's health status.
The impact of these SDOH relates to the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, as well as the wider set of forces and systems shaping the conditions of daily life (Johnson, 2020). These forces and systems include features of the physical environment, economic and social policies, and social norms and attitudes (Crear-Perry et al., 2021). The term social determinants of health describes the complex interplay between these factors that give rise to health disparities within and between populations.
References
CDC. (2022). Healthy communities program. Retrieved from
Crear-Perry, J., Correa-de-Araujo, R., Lewis Johnson, T., McLemore, M. R., Neilson, E., & Wallace, M. (2021). Social and structural determinants of health inequities in maternal health. Journal of Women's Health, 30(2), 230–235.
Graif, C., Meurer, J., & Fontana, M. (2021). An ecological model to frame the delivery of pediatric preventive care. Pediatrics, 148(Suppl 1), s13–s20.
Johnson, T. J. (2020). Intersection of bias, structural racism, and social determinants with health care inequities. Pediatrics, 146(2).
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