The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention maintains a Health Equity portal where users can sign up for the agency’s “Health Equity Matters” email newsletter and sign up to receive email updates about the page. The page also links to the “Conversations in Equity” blog that is update monthly and provides some analysis and context for the statistics. These resources are a good place to start for data, especially information related to health inequities and minority status, and for story ideas.
HealthyPeople.Gov – Determinants of Health: This ongoing federal initiative includes a look at the broad categories impacting people’s health, including policymaking, social factors, health services, individual behavior and biology and genetics. Part of the Department of Health and Human Services project aimed at improving Americans’ health by the year 2020, it offers a basic overview of the social determinants of health as well as additional resources and reports. It also includes a separate section on health disparities.
CBPP: A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality: The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities offers this useful guide on the historical trends in income inequality. The report analyzes data from both the U.S. Census Bureau and Internal Revenue Service to offer a picture of U.S. incomes since the 1970s.
Covering Health in a Multicultural Society
AHCJ produced this book as a tool for understanding the increasing diversity of the audiences we serve. It is meant to expand reporters’ knowledge of what culture, ethnicity, health and well-being mean to people from a variety of backgrounds.
CDC Health Disparities and Inequalities Report — United States, 2013
This the second CDC report to address a multitude of differences in mortality and disease risk related to behaviors, access to health care, and social determinants of health – the conditions in which people are born, grow, live and work. The topics table lists the issues studied in the report and provides links to current data and information about the ongoing work on health disparities across the agency. Download a PDF of the report or get the 2011 version.
The Biology of Disadvantage: Socioeconomic Status and Health
Edited by Nancy E. Adler and Judith Stewart; Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (2010)
How does socioeconomic status “get under the skin” to affect health? This volume surveys the current state of knowledge with 13 articles distilling a decade of research by a network of scholars funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Social Conditions as Fundamental Causes of Disease
Bruce G. Link, Jo Phelan; Journal of Health and Social Behavior (1995)
In this influential paper, Link and Phelan were among the first to make the case that inequalities in health are unlikely to change unless we take steps to reduce inequalities in income, education, and social status: “For example, there are powerful social, cultural, and economic factors shaping the diet of poor people in the United States. Consequently, providing information about healthy diet to poor people and exhorting them to follow nutritional guidelines is unlikely to have much impact. Without an understanding of the context that leads to risk, the responsibility for reducing the risk is left with the individual, and nothing is done to alter the more fundamental factors that put people at risk of risks.”
Employment grade and coronary heart disease in British civil servants
M. G. Marmot, Geoffrey Rose, M. Shipley, and P. J. S. Hamilton; Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health (1978)
A classic paper, based on the pioneering Whitehall study of British civil servants, showing that heart disease mortality rises with decreasing employment grade – even after taking into account differences in body mass index, blood pressure, blood sugar, smoking and physical activity. “It is to be hoped that from a better understanding of the reasons for social class difference in disease, some means may emerge of protecting groups at such greatly increased risk,” the authors conclude.
The Fall and Rise of US Inequities in Premature Mortality: 1960–2002
Nancy Krieger, David H. Rehkopf, Jarvis T. Chen, Pamela D. Waterman, Enrico Marcelli, Malinda Kennedy; PLoS Medicine (2008)
Between 1960 and 2002, U.S. infant death rates and premature mortality fell among county populations across income levels, and socioeconomic and racial/ethnic inequities shrank between 1966 and 1980. But since 1980, the relative health inequities have grown wider. Had all persons experienced the same yearly age-specific premature mortality rates as the highest income one-fifth of the white population, between 1960 and 2002, 14 percent of the white premature deaths and 30 percent of the premature deaths among populations of color would not have occurred.
Rediscovering the social determinants of health
David Mechanic; Health Affairs (2000)
This opinionated review of studies on social determinants of health provides helpful historical background, including how the field began with the work of 19th Century sociologists such as Emile Durkheim and benefitted from a surge of renewed interest starting in the late 1990s.
Q&A with Len Syme, public health pioneer
S. Leonard Syme, who began studying the social determinants of health in the 1950s, talks about the history of the field and where it is heading. He is an emeritus professor at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health and Co-Director of the Health Research for Action Center. Sample quote: “A major flaw in our field is our focus on diseases. We’re really talking about psychosocial risk factors and compromised immune functioning, and while these don’t cause one disease, they increase the risk of all diseases. Once you pick a disease, you’ve lost the power of the approach. But where would you send a grant to study discrimination diseases? Or hopelessness diseases?”
Health Policy Brief: Health Gaps
Health and longevity are driven by factors such as race, gender, educational attainment, and ZIP code “that should not make a difference,” Catherine Dower observes in this health policy brief produced by Health Affairs through a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Dower provides a concise backgrounder on health disparities, a rundown of the policy implications, an informed look at what the future holds, and links to more in-depth research.