A few weeks ago we talked about the relationship that existed between the neighborhood in which we lived and the future of our children in which a higher life expectancy was related to a quality education. Today a new study conducted in the United States comes to support this hypothesis.
The results directly relate the health of the individual with their level of education, even comparing the lack of studies with smoking. So We cannot say it more clearly: lack of education kills.
The study is based on a classical theory that relates the educational level of a person to their state of health. The relationship is simple, at a higher level of education people have a greater knowledge of our environment, medications, remedies against diseases, dangerous substances, healthy habits, etc. All this directly affects our state of health. Now this study published in the journal PLOS ONE comes to corroborate the previous theory.
The researchers analyzed the number of deaths in 2010 of those with low levels of education and crossed them with the deaths of those with high levels, simply applying the percentage of deaths of the second to the first group the number of individuals who would still be alive, theoretically, would come out if their level of education had been higher.
The figures returned by the study have led many researchers to compare low levels of study with deaths caused by bad habits such as smoking. That is, if all the individuals studied had the same educational level they would have saved, only in 2010, 145,243 lives. Although we must bear in mind that despite the evidence, some of these associations could have been casual, such as accidental deaths or murders, etc.
"The educational level that a person reaches is related to their level of literacy and their level of health knowledge, and that is linked to their behaviors: at a higher level of education, better nutrition, more exercise and less drugs are consumed" says Ildefonso Hernández, Professor of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the Miguel Hernández University and president of SESPAS (Spanish Society of Public Health and Health Administration)
Another example that relates education and health, we can find in the studies on drug addiction that were carried out in the 80s in which it was seen as the AIDS virus had spread more among those drug addicts with lower levels of studies since these were more prone to share syringes than those with a higher level and education.
In addition, the social repercussions of education are very wide: better training is linked to a better job, and therefore, to a better salary. In fact, according to UNICEF figures, an extra year of education translates into a 10% increase in the person's income.
Another effect of education is that it makes us change our attitude towards illness, making us more susceptible to the treatments having greater effect.
Health in all policies
This is what health experts call the direct relationship between education and health level which confirms the importance of considering education as a basic element in the health policies of the countries, because although the study has been carried out in the United States, it would be perfectly applicable within our borders.
"If we want to make a true health promotion, a key aspect is education," says Antoni Trilla, head of epidemiology at the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona.
For Hernandez, a policy aimed at alleviating the high drop-out rates would have obvious social repercussions and extraordinary health effects. Remember that the number of young people who drop out of school in Spain as soon as they finish compulsory education is more than 21%, more than double the rest of our community neighbors.
One thing to remember: According to UNICEF if all the children in the world could simply learn to read today, tomorrow 171 million people would have left poverty behind.
As you can see, we are not talking about university education levels, simply by completing the most basic ones we could talk about great advances, because as I have understood the study it is not a matter of knowing how to build rockets, simply knowing how our body works, how we get infected , basic hygiene measures, access to health and banishing treatments based only on supermarkets would be enough to substantially increase our life expectancy, as well as its quality.
