[Determinants of health and health policy. Part 2. Classification and effectiveness of the determinants]

Determinants of the health and disease are factors of the human biology, environment, system of health and the human behaviour. For the clinical practice not only their identification, but also their effectiveness becomes important. Modern epidemiological gnoseology serves to this purpose using methods both on the individual and the population levels. At the same time, all indexes of the population's health status respond sensitively to two factors of the social sphere: Differences in the economical standard of the population, classified according the social status or family income, and on the psychosocial markers of the population groups. Relation between poverty and diseases is apparent, while relation between the wealth and health is in the modern societies less obvious. Complicated and comparatively fast sociopolitical, cultural, and psychological changes brought about the feeling that poverty and wealth are not taken absolutely (though differences among the two has risen) but more relatively. People appreciate more the quality of life, which is based more on the psycho-socio-cultural "capital", then on purely materialistic values.