SDOH:

Healthcare access and quality is a social determinant of health that has recently impacted my life significantly. At the end of June 2022, I had an accident with one of my horses which ended up sending me to the hospital in an ambulance. I was then transferred to Harborview for surgery that night. I was discharged the following day, so it was a very short hospital visit. This quick visit was well over $50,000, and the bills are still coming in. Luckily, my parents have good medical, and I was still on it. I felt so fortunate to have had medical insurance that could pay for most of my hospital visit. According to healthy people 2030, about 1 in 10 people don’t have health insurance; if they were in a similar situation, they would have been charged that full amount. Because some people do not have health insurance, they would have tried to avoid that hospital visit, which could have very bad and even detrimental effects on their health in the future. After I visited the hospital, I realized how lucky I am to have excellent healthcare access and quality. Since I live near very large cities, I am close to multiple large hospitals, including Harborview, a major trauma center. I was able to get to the hospital in plenty of time because I live so close. People who live far away from larger hospitals may not be able to get out to a large hospital that can do a specific surgery for them in the proper time. I think being close to great quality hospitals influenced me because I could quickly and easily get the surgery I needed from a doctor who had done these surgeries multiple times, whereas the first hospital I went to had never done that surgery. Having this experienced doctor, my outcome of the surgery had increased significantly.

Social geography:

My good healthcare access and quality positively influenced my past. All through my childhood, my parents had taken me in to get all my shots, and I had checkups to ensure I was healthy and to check if I was developing/growing correctly. These checkups allowed me to have the chance to make sure there was nothing wrong with my body and prevent my body from developing something more significant in the future by treating something small early on in my development. As a kid, I never got chickenpox, and I ended up getting the chicken pox vaccines. This primary prevention benefits my future health because it prevents me from getting chickenpox now as an adult, where I could have more complications. As I become older, I will have a lower chance of something going undetected and becoming a problem because I had primary preventions available to me when I was younger. This personal experience shaped me today because if I didn’t have medical insurance or enough money to pay for my surgery, I could not have gone into the hospital and just shook off the pain because I wanted to avoid the crazy hospital expenses; this could have led to me potentially bleeding out or could have made my injury worse and heal improperly towards the future because I didn’t go in for help sooner.

(Health People 2030, n.d).