Housing, income, education, and other social conditions have a greater impact on health than genetics or the quality of health-care systems, according to a new World Health Organisation study.

The research, set to be presented and livestreamed from Geneva on Tuesday, found that social determinants such as poverty, discrimination, and lack of access to resources account for more than 50 per cent of health outcomes.

These “social determinants of health equity” include the environments in which people are born, live, work, and age and their access to power, money, and opportunity.

“These factors create unjust and avoidable health gaps,” said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “Billions of people face higher risks of illness and death simply because of the conditions they’re born into or the social groups they belong to.”

Mr Tedros emphasised that much of the global disease and mortality burden was preventable, calling health inequity a result of political and social decisions that global leaders had the power to change.

(dpa/NAN)