Quarterly Topic

Social drivers of health

Content Type:

  • Quarterly Opinion

    Collective Action and the Social Determinants of Health

    November 2021 Hahrie Han, 

    Scholars and policymakers alike have understood the connection between the social determinants of health and health for centuries now, but progress in… More

  • Does a Rising Median Income Lift All Birth Weights? County Median Income Changes and Low Birth Weight Rates Among Births to Black and White Mothers

    Quarterly Article

    Does a Rising Median Income Lift All Birth Weights? County Median Income Changes and Low Birth Weight Rates Among Births to Black and White Mothers

    October 2021 David S. Curtis,  Thomas E. Fuller-Rowell,  Daniel L. Carlson,  Ming Wen,  Michael R. Kramer, 

    Low birth weight and infant mortality rates vary among place and racial group in the United States, with economic resources being a likely fundamental contributor to these disparities. The goals of this study were to examine time-varying county median income as a predictor of LBW rates and Black-White LBW disparities and to test county prevalence and racial disparities in maternal sociodemographic and health risk factors as mediators. More

  • Quarterly Article

    Advancing Action on Health Equity Through a Sociolegal Model of Health

    October 2021 Ashley Schram,  Tessa Boyd-Caine,  Suzie Forell,  Fran Baum,  Sharon Friel, 

    In the field of public health, the law and legal systems remain a poorly understood and substantially underutilized tool to address unfair or unjust societal conditions underpinning health inequities. The aim of our article is to demonstrate the value of expanding from a social model of health to a sociolegal model of health and empowering health actors to use the law more strategically in the pursuit of health equity. More

  • Evidence-Based Message Strategies to Increase Public Support for State Investment in Early Childhood Education: Results from a Longitudinal Panel Experiment

    Quarterly Article

    Evidence-Based Message Strategies to Increase Public Support for State Investment in Early Childhood Education: Results from a Longitudinal Panel Experiment

    August 2021 Jeff Niederdeppe,  Liana B. Winett,  Yiwei Xu,  Erika Franklin Fowler,  Sarah E. Gollust, 

    Investments in early childhood education can have a long-lasting impact on health and well-being. This study by Jeff Niederdeppe of Cornell University and colleagues compared types of messages to garner public support, including simple advocacy messages, policy narratives (short stories with a setting, characters, and a plot that offers a policy solution to a social problem), and inoculation messages (messages designed to prepare audiences for building resistance to opposing messages). The authors found that narrative messages may be particularly effective in persuading individuals inclined to oppose such policies, while inoculation messages may protect favorable child care policy attitudes. More