Health Policy Gets Personal

Introduction

As the North Carolina Medical Journal continues its journey through the 21 indicators of Healthy North Carolina 2030, we come to the six measurable indicators of health behavior. And here is where the discussion gets personal.

Decades of study have revealed that our health is actually determined more by social, economic, and behavioral factors than our DNA. It’s this insight that introduced the concept of social drivers of health and has driven discussion and interventions to better explain disparities in health outcomes.

Still, many point to individual behaviors as the leading cause of disparate health outcomes, and despair that individual change is hard and unrealistic. The authors in this issue of the NCMJ deftly explore the interface between social drivers of health and individual behavior. They reveal how social, economic, and racial and ethnic disparities shape individual behavior—often for the worse—and how connection, community, and public policy shape it for the better.

Individual actions can be incentivized, community supports can be strengthened, and public policies can, and do, influence malleable behaviors. Lives and life courses can be changed in hopeful and significant ways that improve health. It’s fitting that this penultimate issue covering Healthy NC 2030 addresses health behaviors. We are lifted from despair and despondency that “nothing ever changes” by descriptions of concrete and successful action. NCMJ