Identifying Future Health Professionals' Understanding of the determinants of health

Background: An understanding of the determinants of health is essential for all health professionals to be able to contribute to health promotion and disease prevention. Method: This project sought to explore first-year students' understanding of determinants of health through a photo-graph essay assessment. Results: Approximately one third of the students chose to depict social determinants of health, such as poverty and homelessness. Other determinants, such as individual human behavior, physical determinants, and policy, were less frequently selected. Content analysis of the students' photograph essay indicated two themes regarding approaches they believed could be used to improve equity-Education, and The Role of the Government. Conclusion: Given the expectations of health professionals to contribute to health promotion and disease prevention in their com-munities, the findings from this study provide evidence for the need to develop new teaching and learning strategies to more effectively prepare health professional students for the future.