World Health Day

  Unsafe, low-quality, overcrowded housing drives health inequities   by creating the conditions that expose people to violence and injuries and promote ill-health from infectious and noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). Energy inefficient housing and inadequate incomes create energy poverty – especially for older people with disabilities, young children, and families who spend more time at home. Cold   indoor temperatures   can affect physical and mental health, especially for older people, and impair children’s learning. Extreme   indoor hea t can lead to heat exhaustion, stroke, and heart disease. Poor housing also exposes people to toxic materials,   indoor air pollution   low-quality housing design and maintenance hazards, such as falls.  COVID-19, housing, and health:  COVID-19 has increased people’s exposure to the health risks of poor housing through the global “stay at home” response. Around one billion people live in urban slums and a...

 Health and illness follow a social gradient – the lower a person’s socioeconomic position, the worse their chances for health. This downward slope is the product of the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age, and their access to power, resources and decision-making (the “ social determinants ofhealth ”). These conditions include a person’s education ; income ; access to social protection (e.g. affordable child services, sickness pay, unemployment protection; and pensions); access to quality health services and good nutrition; access to healthy housing and clean air ; and to financial and judicial services.  The quality of these conditions is often made worse by discrimination, stereotyping, and prejudice, which most often affect women and girls, older people, people with disability, or are based on race, ethnicity or sexual identity. Such discrimination occurs not only between individuals, but is often embedded within our institutions and systems, l...