At a grocery store, $4 is a head of lettuce, tomatoes, and a cucumber. At Wendy’s, $4 is a double cheeseburger, French fries, 4 pc chicken nuggets, and a fountain drink. One might ask, how can you remain healthy if society requires that are you economically stable in order to do so? When looking at rural versus urban health, you notice citizens who live in rural areas have less access to proper healthcare, nutritional meals, and live sedentary lives. Health isn’t something that should be unattainable based on what you can afford. Hence, our society needs to create easier ways to access affordable food rather than capitalizing on fast food. Eating right allows you to grow mentally and physically which should not be a privilige. After acknowleding the gap in healthcare between urban and rural settings, it makes me question if location has just as much as an impact on one's health. In Bill Davenhall’s TED talk “Your Health Depends on Where You Live”, he expresses how though he lived a healthy life with frequent exercise and proper meals, he still faced a heart attack later in life. It was because he was living in areas with high pollution rates in the United States. The fumes and gases from factories are destroying ecosystems and making it more likely for people to get asthma and other life-long illnesses. Mass production of clothing and a McDonald's cheeseburger should not be more important than one's health. As a nation, we care more about our economy than the health of our people and that is a BIG problem. Therefore, there needs to be more solutions to bridge the gaps in healthcare. In “Why Urban Health Matters”, one of their action steps is to “make urban areas resilient to emergencies and disasters” (World Health Organization 15). Vague, vague, and vague. How can you make urban areas more adaptable if you can’t predict emergencies that will arise in the future? You never know what can happen. For instance, after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, FEMA, the Red Cross, and the UN tried to make the country more resilient. However, Hurricane Matthew in 2016 wiped away all their hard work. Emergencies are not predictable. That’s why they are emergencies to begin with. Making cities and countries less susceptible to disaster is not a realistic solution. Educating people on the value of health and providing more healthcare officials will create equality in rural and urban healthcare. Your Health Depends on Where You Live. Perf. Bill Davenhall. Youtube. TEDMed, 25 Jan. 2010. Web. 7 Apr. 2017. "Why Urban Health Matters." World Health Organization. World Health Organization, 2010. Web.
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