social determinants
kkrisberg | February 5, 2016For public health workers, it’s no surprise that social, economic and political conditions shape the distribution and burden of disease. They’ve always known that it takes much more than medicine to keep people healthy. Still, when public health scientist Kristina Talbert-Slagle decided to study the impact of social and public health spending on HIV/AIDS, she wasn’t sure what she’d uncover.
“We thought that maybe there would be a connection, but we didn’t really know what to expect,” said Talbert-Slagle, a senior scientific officer at the Yale Global Health Leadership Institute and a lecturer…
kkrisberg | October 18, 2013A new study finds that dropping out of high school greatly increases the risk of illness and disability in young adulthood. It's another example of why education is one of the greatest social determinants of health and a key leverage point in improving health across the lifespan.
Published earlier this month in the journal BMC Public Health, researchers found that dropping out of high school was associated with later illness and disability even after adjusting for other factors, such as family socioeconomic status, health-related risk behaviors, psychosocial risk factors and school problems.…
kkrisberg | August 26, 2013Helping others isn't only the right thing to do, it's the healthy thing to do.
In a recent study published in the September issue of the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH), researchers found that helping others was a predictor of reduced mortality because it buffers the relationship between stress and death. In other words, stress did not predict mortality among people who had helped others in the past year, but it did predict mortality among those who had not helped others.
In fact, study researchers found that their data, along with previous data, "indicate that help given to others…
lborkowski | June 4, 2012by Kim Krisberg
A recent report again confirms what comes as no surprise to public health practitioners: that income and education are inextricably tied to the opportunities for better health and longevity.
In mid-May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its yearly report on Americans' health, "Health, United States, 2011." This year's report included a special section examining the links between socioeconomic status and health. It's another reminder that good health is as much — or even more — tied to what goes on outside a doctor's office rather than what goes on inside…