Readings:
Bezruchka, S. (2014). Inequality Kills. In D. C. Johnston (Ed.), Divided: the perils of our growing inequality. New York: New Press.

Birn Chap. 7

Both of the readings were different and similar in some ways. Birn’s chapter covered many issues, such as the patterns of health from the societal determinants of health perspective, and factors that influence health at personal, community, national, and global levels. Something that was similar between both readings was that they both talked about how social inequalities affect health. My first response to Birn’s chapter was neutral/more positive, because for me Birn just kept providing facts of societal determinants of health which most of them I had heard of before in some way. It was really interesting too, some of the facts I actually hadn’t thought about before so I learned new things as well. However, when we got towards the end of the chapter that was when I didn’t know most of the facts from prior knowledge. I found Bezruchka’s reading very interesting and thought provoking. I really didn’t expect the US to be so down the ladder in health, so that came to me as a shock what made me want to read the article more. These readings linked a lot with other themes in this class because it correlated to the impact global processes make on health around the world. Although the Bezruchka article talked about some things that should be done to make health better in the US, a question that came to my mind was, why can’t