Health & Community

“In a community practice setting, OT practitioners use the same clinical skills to explore determinants of health beyond the physical by taking a systems approach to understanding health and disease.” (Wilcock, 2006)

 

I love this statement that Wilcock made because it underlines the importance of our role in community work. It is crucial that we understand the community’s context, systems and conditions BEYOND any physiological problem that affect the health status of individuals or groups of people. There are some factors that influence our work in the community which are:

·         Socioeconomic status

·         Culture

·         Political infrastructure

·         Public transport

·         Availability of health care services

·         Geographic location

I have stated in one of my previous blogs, that occupation plays a key role in the health status of a community. You see a fundamental belief of OT states that occupation and health go hand in hand. If there is any type of inability of engaging in occupation for community members, problems arise which can affect the entire community. Like Wilcock stated, “occupations demonstrate a community and an individual’s culturally sanctioned intellectual, moral, social and physical attributes. It is only by what they are or what they hope to be.” (Wilcock, 2006) As OT’s it is important to examine the SOURCE of the problem in the community which will be the underlying of the general problems that crop up amongst the members. Political and social decisions and choices that are made by authority can affect communities, which makes it important for us to keep a drift with what is happening in our surrounding communities.   

 Yesterday we went to the Markets of Warwick!!

 

 

This was a classic example of what community life is all about.

Warwick Junction lies on the edge of the Durban’s inner-city and is the primary public transport interchange in the city. It has roughly 5000 – 8000 vendours trading which are spread across the different markets. Richard (one of our tour guides) also mentioned the fact that nearly half a million people pass through the area DAILY! That’s crazy right!

 

There is the bead market, Berea station market, Bovine head cooking market, Brook street market, Victoria street market, Early morning market, Herb market, Impepho market and the Music bridge.

We were also informed that the markets are currently the only informally structured market area in a public space of this particular magnitude!

One could say that this is a community that thrives on occupations and as we could sense and see, it seems (as far as we could see) to be an adequate community system as a whole.

 

Reference

Wilcock,A.(2006).An occupational perspective on health (2nd.ed.). Thorofare, NJ:Slack