When it comes to taking care of your health, the basics can seem challenging enough: Eat right, exercise, get enough sleep, visit your doctor for regular checkups.
But what if you can’t afford healthy food? What if you don’t have a car to travel to the doctor’s office? What if you don’t have a home, let alone a comfortable bed?
Those are some of the “social determinants of health,” a term that is becoming more prominent as research shows how environmental conditions — where people are born and how they live, work, play and worship — can affect a wide range of health outcomes.
It’s a lot to tackle, says Becky Gray, director of Building Health, a non-profit subsidiary of Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas. Building Health was formed in 2020 to address some of the key factors contributing to poor health in this region of the state.
CHC/SEK has offices in communities throughout the area. Iola is the group’s second-largest clinic to its Pittsburg headquarters.
“If we want to be successful, we need to be healthy and educated,” Gray said. “It’s one of those societal goals that’s also a selfish goal. If we want to do well as a culture and a country, that means we all need to be doing well.”
In other words, equity. Economic equity. Racial equity. Gender equity. Educational equity.
“It’s equity in terms of access to the things that make our lives better — and then you look at that equity through a health lens,” she said.
For example, if you don’t have access to a grocery store, you’re less likely to have good nutrition. That increases the risk of conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and obesity. It even lowers life expectancy relative to people who do have access to healthy food, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.
Now, imagine you have diabetes and visited a doctor who prescribed not just medication but also food. That’s actually happening, thanks to a grant from the Sunflower Foundation called “Food is Medicine.”
CHC/SEK’s Pittsburg office is one of six health agencies in Kansas to launch the new initiative, which works with clinics and food pantries to provide medically tailored groceries, nutritious food and meal ingredients and cooking educational opportunities to help people better manage their chronic disease.
“I think that’s a natural fit for our clinics,” Gray said.
GRAY, who comes from a background in affordable housing and community development, believes the conversation needs to shift. For too long, housing insecurity is seen as a sort of individual failing. If a person doesn’t have adequate housing, perhaps they made poor life choices that put them in the situation. Maybe they misuse drugs and alcohol. Maybe they can’t maintain employment. Maybe they have poor credit. Maybe they got evicted.
“It often turns to a moral judgment, but when you really start evaluating the situation from a macro level, you realize it’s very structural. We’ve had laws and systems in place for decades that led us to this position,” she said.
“The next question is, how do we restructure.”
