Leveraging Social Capital to Promote Health Equity: Social Worker’s Approach

I’ve been writing for the past month about the topic of the health equity and social determinants of health. If we ascribe to the notion of both health equity and social determinants, then we understand how striving towards health equity requires structural and social change. Because of the growing body of research coming from social epidemiology in the past 25 years, we are able to establish social factors as casual to one’s health. Importantly, this shows that the more equitable a society is, the more health is equitably distributed. Many of the northern European countries have shown this trend such as the Netherlands and Denmark. Societies that have larger stratification in wealth have larger disparities in health.

As a native to the United States, this leads to me to wonder, how do we reconstruct a more equitable country? I argue that we start at the community level. We should identify the neighborhoods and communities that naturally form. This should be no larger than a zip code. Census tracks may be one way to identify these communities. Social workers should work at the community level to develop a sense of autonomy, control, and empowerment.

Social workers can use empowerment theory and community level interventions to rebuild sense of control and trust within the community. This can be accomplished through concepts of social capital. Building social capital means connecting community members with one another and work collectively to solve community problems. This is more than problem solving. The intent is to build relationship and trust within the community itself. As communities build trust their ability to act collectively increases and allows them to leverage for greater resources. Not only does the increase in resources promote greater health in the community but so does the increase in sense of control. Social epidemiology shows that feelings of control and self-efficacy predicts life expectancy.

This method of intervention reshapes the pathways for health.

The existing social structure is man made and can be remade. While all human intervention has latent consequences. We must take control of our destinies, our realities.