Health Field Model

✔ A model of the determinants of health proposed by Evans and Stoddart

✔ provides a broad conceptual framework for considering the factors that influence health in a community
✔ includes functional capacity and well-being as health outcomes of interest
✔ multidisciplinary approach- uniting:
1. Biomedical sciences
2. Public health
3. Psychology
4. Statistics and
epidemiology
5. Economics
6. Sociology
7. Education
8. other disciplines

Contributing to differences in health status:

a) Social
b) Environmental
c) Economic
d) Genetic factors

I. Social Environment

- Elements of the social environment:

1.1 family structure

1.2 educational system

1.3 social networks

- is a term that refers to an individual's integration into a self-defined community and the degree of connectedness to other
individuals and to institutions

1.4 social class

1.5 work setting

1.6 level of prosperity.

II. Genetic Endowment

-recognized as having a significant influence on health

- also interact with social and environmental factors to influence health and disease

-possible health risks

III. Physical Environment

- affects health and disease in diverse ways

IV. Behaviour

-is a response to the other determinants and can be seen as an "intermediate" determinant of health.

V. Health Care

-a limited but not negligible role as a determinant of health

LINKING THE DETERMINANTS- ​helps in conceptualizing factors affecting health.

Interventions to Improve Health:

COMMUNITY INTERVENTION:

✔ literature on advocacy and the process of community change abounds

✔ Information linking process with outcome

TARGETS FOR INTERVENTION

✔ The field model of the determinants of health suggests consideration of a wider array of targets.

IMPLICATIONS FOR PERFORMANCE MONITORING

✔ should make use of measures of inputs, process, and outcomes so that their interrelationships can be studied.
 ✔ Outcome-​ measures describe a state of health or well-being

(e.g., immunization rates) that is the product of factors that can be characterized on the basis of the field model

✔ Intermediate outcome-​ measures may be used

(e.g., monitoring changes in prevalence of smoking rather than changes in incidence of lung cancer).

✔ Process-​ measures describe activities that are being performed in connection with efforts to achieve a desired
outcome

✔ Input​- measures (also referred to as measures of structure or capacity) describe the characteristics of resources /
available or in use

(e.g., funds, personnel, equipment, time, policies)

(e.g., number of doses of vaccine available).