A risk factor is something that increases a person’s risk of illness, injury, or harm. Experiences like abuse or domestic violence in the home are risk factors. These can lead to harmful behaviors, substance use, and chronic disease.
Common risk factors
Our behaviors: Substance use, unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, or risky sexual behaviors.
Our physical body and genetics: Age, gender, high blood pressure, obesity, or family medical history.
Our environment and culture: Poor working conditions, limited access to health care, isolation, or institutional racism that limits opportunities to certain races through unfair policies or laws.
Some factors can change and others stay the same.
Factors like age, race, or family health history can’t be changed. Some factors, like where a person lives or how much money they earn, change over time. Other factors may be affected by awareness, trauma, environments, or experiences. These factors include things like a healthy diet or substance use.
Factors are often related and can affect each other.
Research shows that the more childhood trauma an individual has, the higher their risk for poor health. Why? Because risk and protective factors are connected. Simply put, people with some risk factors have a greater chance of experiencing more risk factors. They are also less likely to have protective factors. This connection is true for protective factors, too.
Addressing one factor can improve many health outcomes.
Nearly every risk or protective factor can be linked to a variety of health outcomes. For example, a child who grows up in a violent home is at increased risk of other health challenges, like anxiety or neglect. The good news? The opposite is also true. Addressing a single risk factor, like poverty, lowers the risk for many other unfavorable health outcomes. That’s one powerful way to help whole communities achieve better health.
Risk and protective factors affect many aspects of our health. That’s good. It means community-wide programs can improve people’s lives more easily. How? By focusing on reducing risks and strengthening protective factors.
This community-wide approach is key in addressing risk and protective factors out of a person’s control. These risk factors include community disruption, discrimination, economic stability, food insecurity, housing inequity, and racism.