A press release from the Stiftung Gesundheitswissen (SGW), a non-profit operating foundation whose goal is for people to become co-creators of their own health, reveals that socioeconomic status in society generally determines whether or not someone lives a health-conscious lifestyle and increasingly focuses on prevention. This is also true for access to health information. These key findings of the impact of social status on health issues are part of SGW’s just-released health report, „Status Symbol Health – How Social Status Can Affect Prevention and Health,“ which was compiled using 1,255 face-to-face oral interviews of people 16 and older. The Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research collected the data from the representative population survey in 2020. It was then evaluated by the foundation: according to this, in 2020, across the population, only 35 percent of respondents believe that they can have a „strong“ influence on their own health, although surveys from 2015 showed higher values of 46 percent. A social divide can be seen in the population, with people of lower socioeconomic status having little belief in positive influence (25 percent of respondents), compared with 50 percent of respondents in the higher social classes. 75 percent of these people also rate their own health as „good“ to „very good.“ Among respondents of lower socioeconomic status, the figure is only one in two. The study also looked at knowledge of prevention options. These include factors such as „not smoking,“ „getting enough sleep,“ „getting plenty of exercises,“ and „watching your weight.“ The majority of Germans are aware that these are all factors that influence their own health. However, people from lower social classes attach less importance to individual factors than respondents from higher social classes. The difference is very large when it comes to the question of regular sport and exercise. Here, the social divide is most pronounced, at 59 percent to 82 percent. But even on the topic of „not smoking,“ the difference is still 78 to 88 percent. The conclusion is that the effects and consequences of one’s own lifestyle are assessed differently depending on one’s status in society and that action is also taken accordingly. The implementation of certain behaviours in prevention has not yet reached the minds of every respondent, because people are usually already interested in health issues. However, many with low social status do not know how to get helpful information and cannot distinguish bad from the good. Professor Dr. Doris Schaeffer, one of the study’s scientific advisors, sees a need for action to improve personal health literacy in the long term. The social gap is too high when it comes to health issues. In the meantime, however, there are already projects in schools, such as the media package „Healthy all the time“, which aim to close the gap in health education so that knowledge of prevention options is no longer a question of socioeconomic status.
Source: gesundheit-adhoc.de