Social Determinants of Health Framework

This toolkit uses a social determinants of health framework to examine different facets of the international student experience to better understand their unique vulnerabilities and needs regarding their mental health. This framework refers to the non-medical aspects of a person’s life that shape their health outcomes. As outlined in the Anti-Oppressive Practice Toolkit, they are the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, and the wider set of forces and systems shaping the conditions of daily life. This approach is reflective of the World Health Organization’s stance that mental health and the onset of many mental disorders are shaped by the upstream factors that construct our environments and material conditions.