ABSTRACT

The simplest definition of determinant of health is any factor that contributes to a person’s health, although this understates the complexities. Historically, both the fields of medicine and public health concentrated on improving people’s health, with medicine gradually evolving to devoting more time to restoring health than to improving health, especially as the scientific basis of contagious illness became more well developed. Overall health status

was improving before the discovery of specific causes of illness, primarily because of improvement in public health efforts, including general sanita­ tion, food, and housing; as well as isolation and quarantine to control epi­ demics. One of the earliest examples of the importance of social factors on health status was in 1850, when Virchow noted that a typhoid outbreak was worse because of a widespread famine. He was the first to use the term determinants when he observed education, freedom, and welfare were three factors that could prevent future typhoid outbreaks (Maio, 2010).