Poverty and Health Reading Passage
Learn about IELTS General Reading.
Poverty and Health Reading Passage
Paragraph A:
The 1970s emphasized lifestyle and behavior to avoid sickness and illness. Targeted behaviors include smoking, inactivity, and bad eating. Creating health means providing medical treatment and health promotion programs and policies to promote healthy habits and lifestyles. Humanistic interest in a healthy approach to health works for some, but not for those with poverty, unemployment, joblessness, or little command over their daily lives. Both the health promotion and medical approaches to health overlooked social and environmental factors impacting people's health.
Paragraph B:
At the 1986 Ottawa Conference, a charter identified new pathways for health promotion based on a socio-ecological understanding of health. The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion still guides health activities today. Good health is a vital resource for social, economic, and personal growth and an important aspect of quality of life, according to the scope of health promotion. Political, economic, social, cultural, environmental, behavioral, and biological variables all affect health. The Ottawa Charter makes health promotion actionable. It presents health in all ways and approaches. The underlying principle of health promotion is 'allowing individuals to increase control over and enhance their health.'
Paragraph C:
Health has primarily been considered in a physical way throughout recent Western history. To put it another way, traditionally, good health has been linked to the body's efficient mechanical operation, whereas unhealthy states have been linked to flaws in this machine. According to medical definitions, health in this sense is the elimination of disease or illness. In accordance with this viewpoint, promoting people's health entails offering healthcare services to cure or prevent illness and disease. Housing, better sanitation, and access to clean water were emphasized during this time.
Paragraph D:
Health is now seen in terms of the social, economic, and environmental settings in which individuals live, even though lifestyle elements are still crucial. The social-economic view of health refers to this comprehensive approach to health. During the first International Conference of Public Health, which took place in Ottawa, Canada, in 1986, participants from 38 different nations agreed and declared that the basic prerequisites and resources for health are social justice, equity, housing, schooling, nourishment, a viable income, a stable ecosystem, and sustainable resources. A strong base on these fundamental needs is necessary for health improvement.
Paragraph E:
The idea of health can imply different things to different people and different societies depending on the context. These conceptions of health have also developed considerably over the course of human history. There is no better illustration of this growth than the manner in which ideas regarding health and the promotion of health in contemporary Western society are being broadened and put to the test.
Paragraph F:
This physically and medically focused perspective of health was contested by the World Health Organization in the late 1940s. They argued that "health is not only the absence of sickness; rather, it is a full condition of physical, mental, and social well-being in all aspects of one's life”. Health and the individual were seen from a more holistic perspective, taking into account the mind as well as the body and the spirit.
Paragraph G:
There has been a significant shift apart from seeing lifestyle hazards as the main contributor to ill health during the 1980s and 1990s. This statement demonstrates that encouraging healthy behaviors and lifestyles and providing medical care is insufficient to bring about health. To promote health, issues including poverty, pollution, urbanization, resource depletion, social alienation, and poor working conditions must be addressed. Health is a result of social, economic, and environmental factors working together. Conditions that promote health are determined by their intricate interrelationships. A socio-ecological theory of health emphasizes that social, economic, and environmental factors must all be taken into account while promoting health.
Link sent to your number
