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Shift toward social determinants transforming public health work: Targeting causes of health disparities

Articles | June 16 2016
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Shift toward social determinants transforming public health work: Targeting causes of health disparities
From left, Bienvendida Barreno and Jorge Baquero listen in November in Miami as insurance agent Antonio Galis discusses health plans available in the third year of the Affordable Care Act. Access to health insurance is a social determinant of health, a factor that can influence lifelong health and well-being. Photo by Joe Raedle, courtesy Getty Images

by Kim Krisberg

Several years ago, public health workers in Wayne County, Michigan, embarked on a new endeavor to tackle infant mortality, an issue that affected the community’s black newborns at more than twice the rate of white newborns.

But instead of looking to medicine for answers, workers headed upstream to confront social determinants that put black babies at a disadvantage long before conception occurs.

“We wanted to focus on education, employment, social isolation, structural racism — all those factors combined correlate to an unfavorable birth outcome and the chances of a child not celebrating his or her first birthday,” APHA member Mouhanad Hammami, MD, director of the Wayne County Department of Health, Veterans and Community Wellness, told The Nation’s Health. “What happens from the time a girl is born to the time she has a child?” (Read more)