Zero to Three: A Washington-based advocacy group, Zero to Three focuses on policies affecting infants and very young children. The nonprofit’s work on early childhood development includes examinations of brain development, sleep, trauma, social/emotional learning, and nutrition. It also looks at educational issues such as screen time, literacy and child care. Additionally, experts at the group focus on parent-related issues, including support for veteran and military families. Press contact: Madeline Daniels, mdaniels@zerotothree.org, 202-857-2994 or @danielsmadeline
National Rural Health Association (NRHA): The National Rural Health Association is a national organization for rural health care providers and government agencies that advocates for rural health issues. It offers its own look at how rural health differs than care provided in other areas, including a snapshot with statistics comparing less populated areas to urban centers. It also produces a quarterly magazine that may offer story ideas or potential contacts.
Healthy People 2020: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Health
Healthy People provides science-based, 10-year national objectives for improving the health of all Americans. For three decades, Healthy People has established benchmarks and monitored progress. It has added social determinants of LGBT health as a topic area (see this PDF presentation). Its portal on the topic includes an overview of health disparities in the LGBT community, as well as references, data, Healthy People 2020’s objectives in this area and evidence-based resources.
Who and What Is a “Population”? Historical Debates, Current Controversies, and Implications for Understanding “Population Health” and Rectifying Health Inequities
Nancy Krieger, Milbank Q. (2012)
An eye-opening critique of the ways that medical researchers define and study “populations” and attempt to apply findings in medicine and public health. Epidemiology, for example, routinely uses population data to study disease causation with the understanding that such research cannot predict which individual will get the disease in question, while medical research “remains bent on using just these sorts of data to predict an individual’s risk.” Krieger goes on to ask, “what might be the adverse consequences of discounting people that mainstream research already routinely and problematically calls ‘hard-to-reach’ populations? These populations include the disempowered and dispossessed, whose adverse social and physical circumstances mean that their range of exposures almost invariably differ, in both level and type, from those encountered by the effectively ‘easy-to-reach.’”
Overcoming Obstacles to Health in 2013 and Beyond
RWJF Commission to Build a Healthier America (2013)
Poor, middle-class and even wealthy Americans are less healthy than their counterparts in other affluent countries. The authors analyze the existing research to explain why Americans are not as healthy as they could be, and suggest evidence-based solutions.
Healthy People: A 2020 Vision for the Social Determinants Approach
Howard K. Koh, Julie J. Piotrowski, Shiriki Kumanyika, and Jonathan E. Fielding; Health Education & Behavior (2011)
For 30 years, the U.S. government’s “Healthy People” initiative set public health goals with little regard to factors such as poverty and education. Koh, U.S. assistant secretary for health, explains how that started to change in 2010, with the Healthy People 2020 update
Closing the gap in a generation: health equity through action on the social determinants of health
Michael Marmot, Sharon Friel, Ruth Bell, Tanja A. J. Houweling, Sebastian Taylor; WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health; Lancet (2008)
“Social injustice is killing people on a grand scale, and the reduction of health inequities, between and within countries, is an ethical imperative,” assert the authors, who distill the findings and recommendations of the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health.
Reaching for a Healthier Life
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Socioeconomic Status and Health (2008)
Makes the case that policies to support healthy living conditions for all citizens are needed, and that the cost of implementing such policies would be offset by subsequent savings through increased productivity and lower health care costs.