HEALTH AND EDUCATION CORRELATED

HEALTH AND SOCIETY II

GEORGIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF MEDICINE

2021

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ABSTRACT

Compared to contemporaries with lower levels of education, adults with higher levels of
education are healthier and live longer. The difference is significant and continues to expand.
We believe that eliminating health inequities and improving the health of the population
requires a better understanding of education and the macro-environment that this
connection creates.
In this article, we briefly review and critically assess the current state of research on the
relationship between education and health. Next, we outline the following learning
directions: We go beyond achievement and show the importance of the school educational
process for a person's health; We also explain the importance of a specific socio-political
historical environment, in which the relationship between education and health is repaired.
This research agenda helps influence effective policies and interventions to help people live
longer and healthier lives.
Keywords: education, health, US adults, causality, social context, policy
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INTRODUCTION

It is now well acknowledged that a number of social factors outside of health care have a
significant impact on health outcomes. Researchers have discovered significant disparities in
morbidity, mortality, and risk factors within and between countries, which are modeled after
[ CITATION Woo13 \l 1033 ][ CITATION Mar09 \l 1033 ][ CITATION Bak14 \l 1033 ] traditional social

determinants of health, such as education and wealth (Link and Phelan, 1995; CSDH, 2008),
as well as the physical and social environment in which individuals live—and the
macrostructural policies that affect them (Link and Phelan, 1995; CSDH, 2008).

These socioecological issues, together with unhealthy behaviors and health-care system flaws,
were named by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine in a 2013 report
as key explanations for the United States' "health disadvantage. Americans have worse health
than people in other high-income countries, and their health has deteriorated in recent
decades (Wolf SH, Aron LY J.A.M.A, 2013). This is due in part to huge health disparities and
the poor health of persons with low education levels (Marmot MG, Bell R. J.A.M.A 2009).
Understanding the health advantages of education is therefore essential for lowering health
inequities and enhancing the well-being of 21st-century people.

Despite much earlier study, important concerns about the relationship between education
and health remain unsolved, in part because education and health are intimately linked
throughout generations and are inexorably linked to the broader social context. Research-
based on decades of experience in the developing world has identified educational status
(especially of the mother) as a major predictor of health outcomes, and economic trends in
the industrialized world have intensified the relationship between education and health.

During the past several generations, education has become the principal pathway to financial
security, stable employment, and social success (Baker DP, 2014). We posit that to effectively
inform future educational and heath policy, we need to capture education ‘in action’ as it
generates and constrains opportunity during the early lifespans of today’s cohorts.
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THE HEALTH BENEFITS ASSOCIATED WITH EDUCATION

One of the most straightforward explanations for the link between education and health is
that education provides benefits that later predispose the recipient to better health outcomes.
These educational returns, such as greater incomes, can be thought of as “downstream”
benefits of schooling.

variety of potential downstream effects of education on health, beginning with how

individuals experience health benefits from education, then moving on to health-related
community (or place-based) characteristics that frequently surround people with high or low
education, and finally, the larger role of social context and social policy.

IMPACT AT THE INDIVIDUAL LEVEL

Education can provide a number of advantages that can help the recipient's health. We
examine the function in improving noncognitive and cognitive skills, as well as access to
financial resources, and the effects these have on health habits and health-care utilization.

Education is also impacted by health, development, and a host of personal,

community, and contextual factors.

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TOWARD A SOCIALLY-EMBEDDED UNDERSTANDING OF THE EDUCATION-HEALTH

RELATIONSHIP

Three directions shift the education-health paradigm to consider how education and health
are embedded in life course and social contexts.

Firstly, the educational literature on health conceptualizes and implements education based
on academic years or certificates of completion. However, academic performance is only an
extension of formal school education and the end of a broad process, although it is certainly
important. In this process, the quality, type, content, peers, teachers and many other
personal, institutional and interpersonal factors. shape school education and the life course of
education. Health. Understanding the role of the school education process in health outcomes
is policy-related, as it can indicate whether interventions should be aimed at improving
performance or, more importantly, improving quality, changing content, or improving in
some other way the early stages of the educational process. Health returns.

Second, most studies implicitly or explicitly consider the level of education as an exogenous
starting point and a driver of opportunities in adulthood. However, education can also
reproduce inequality between generations. A clear recognition of the dual role of education is
essential to formulate educational policies that avoid the unintended consequences of
growing inequality.

Third, the previous comments indicate that there are significant differences in education and
health associations in different historical and social contexts. Education and health are
inseparable from these antecedents, so the analysis must take them as the basic influence on
the Health Education Association. Research on situational variation can determine specific
situational and even political characteristics that exacerbate or reduce differences in health
education.
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Important intergenerational and individual socio-demographic factors shape educational

opportunities and educational trajectories, which are directly related to and captured in
measures of educational attainment. This longitudinal and life course process culminates in
educational disparities in adult health and mortality. Importantly, the macro-level context
underlies every step of this process, shaping each of the concepts and their relationships.
Education leads to better, more stable jobs that pay higher income and allow families to
accumulate wealth that can be used to improve health (Mirowsky [ CITATION Cul08 \l 1033 ]
[ CITATION Pam10 \l 1033 ] J, Ross CE.2003). The economic factors are an important link

between schooling and health, estimated to account for about 30% of the correlation (Cutler
DM, Lleras-Muney A.2008). Health behaviors are undoubtedly an important proximal
determinant of health but they only explain a part of the effect of schooling on health: adults
with less education are more likely to smoke, have an unhealthy diet, and lack exercise
(Pampel FC, Krueger PM, Denney JT,2010). Social-psychological pathways include successful
long-term marriages and other sources of social support to help cope with stressors and daily
hassles. Interestingly, access to health care, while important to individual and population
health overall, has a modest role in explaining health inequalities by education, highlighting
the need to look upstream beyond the health care system toward social factors that underlie
social disparities in health. 
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EDUCATION IMPACT AT THE COMMUNITY LEVEL

Individuals with more education benefit not only from the resources that schooling brings to
them and their families but also from health-related characteristics of the environments in
which they tend to live, work, and study Although there are many methodological challenges
in estimating community-level effects on individuals (Kawachi and Berkman, 2003; Kawachi
and Subramanian, 2007), communities may confer a range of benefits or risks that can impact
health. In the midst of growing recognition that “place matters” to health, many studies have
tried to estimate neighborhood effects on outcomes such as child/youth educational
attainment, behavioral/well-being outcomes, or health status and mortality. Through a
combination of resources and characteristics, communities expose individuals to varying
levels of risk versus safety (e.g., crime, unemployment, poverty, and exposure to physical
hazards) and provide different levels of resources (e.g., food supply, green space, economic
resources, and health care).

Below we touch on several additional community characteristics that have been linked to
health outcomes, including food access, spaces and facilities for physical activity, access to
health care, community economic resources, crime and violence, and environmental
exposure to toxins.

Food access: Unhealthy eating habits are linked to numerous acute and chronic health
problems, such as diabetes, hypertension, obesity, heart disease, and stroke as well as higher
mortality rates, but access to healthier foods tends to be limited in neighborhoods with lower
median incomes and lower levels of educational attainment.

Spaces and facilities for physical activity: People with higher education and income are more
likely to live in neighborhoods that provide green space (e.g., parks), sidewalks, and other
places that enable residents to walk and cycle to work and shopping, exercise, and outside
play. Lower-income neighborhoods and those with higher proportions of nonwhite residents
are also less likely to have commercial exercise facilities (Powell et al., 2006).
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Access to health care: Because of the maldistribution of health care providers in the United
States (HHS, 1998), access to clinicians and facilities tends to be in shortest supply in rural
and low-income areas. Thus, apart from whether residents have the health insurance
coverage and resources to afford health care, they may struggle to find local primary care
providers, specialists, and hospitals that provide quality health care services.

Community economic resources: The lack of jobs in low-income communities can exacerbate
the economic hardship that is common for people with less education, who are more likely to
live in communities with a weak economic base that is unattractive to businesses, employers,
and investors and are thereby often caught in a self-perpetuating cycle of economic decline
and marginalization.

Crime and violence: Community crime rates can impact health through the direct effects of
violent crimes on victims, such as trauma and high youth mortality rates. Crime can also
affect health indirectly, such as through fear of crime (Stafford et al., 2007) or the cumulative
stress of living in unsafe neighborhoods. The 2006 and 2007 rounds of the American
Community Survey found that, among young male high school drop-outs, nearly 1 in 10 was
institutionalized on a given day in 2006–2007 versus fewer than 1 of 33 high school graduates
(Sum et al., 2009).

Environmental exposure to toxins: People of color and those with less education are more
likely to live in neighborhoods that are near highways, factories, bus depots, power plants,
and other sources of air and water pollution. A large body of research on environmental
justice has documented the disparate exposure of low-income and minority neighborhoods to
hazardous waste, pesticides, and industrial chemicals (Bullard et al., 2011; Calnan and
Johnson, 1985). This exposure to toxins is perhaps the most undiscriminating place-based
characteristic because residents’ personal socioeconomic advantages (e.g., education, income)
offer no protection against the adverse health consequences of inhalation or ingestion of such
toxins.
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THE LARGER SOCIAL CONTEXT AND SOCIAL POLICY

Health inequities are largely driven by the social context in which people are born and live
and work, that is, social policies that affect resources, institutions, and laws; economic
systems that create and distribute material and financial resources; rules for managerial
interaction. People's living conditions, for example the built environment, public
transportation, urban design, crime rates, food deserts and the location of polluting factories,
are determined by macrostructural policies and cultural values that mold them. Analysis and
effective solutions to health-related problems must address factors beyond the level of
personal and proximal risk factors (O Campo & Dunn, 2011). These effects have been
recognized by organizations that focus on local, national, and international health outcomes.
The World Health Organization calls to improve living and working conditions, support
social protection policies for all, reduce inequality and strengthen governance and civil
society (CSDH, 2008). Healthy People 2020 has many health policy objectives, including
improving environmental conditions (such as air / water quality and exposure to hazards),
preventing violence, reducing poverty, and increasing higher education rates.
The decisions made by society, voters, and political decision-makers, including decision-
makers inside and outside of government, have a profound impact on education itself and on
the institutions and resources that constitute the socio-ecological framework that links
education and health. Take for example. In other societies, the adverse health consequences
of poverty are often cushioned by social services, which are designed to protect the health of
children, young parents and other vulnerable groups.
Historical, economic, and cultural factors play a central role in opportunities, values, and
behaviors. Inequality by gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and disability affect risks
and opportunities for people throughout the world. “Cultural status beliefs work their effects
on inequality primarily at the social relational level by shaping people’s expectations for
themselves and others and their consequent actions in social contexts”
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CONCLUSION

Education and health are essential to the well-being of the people and the people. They are
also inseparable in context and social structure. Future research must go beyond individual-
centered analysis and formulate hypotheses in a bottom-up direction (Montez JK, 2017),
using a contextual approach to understand education and health. This method requires
interdisciplinary cooperation, innovation in conceptual models, and a wealth of data sources.
The three directions of future research on health return to education that we described above
can help produce results and provide information for effective health and education policies
and interventions to reduce disparities. In this critical period of health and social decline that
continues to widen health disparities and less educated Americans, research and policy have
an opportunity to play a role in improving the health and well-being of our population.
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Pavithra Prakash Gomatiguntalla

Georgian National University

Faculty of medicine