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Resource Library

The Partners for Advancing Health Equity (P4HE) Resource Library is a virtual portal containing action-oriented health equity research, practice, and policies. The library aims to increase equity in health by offering free access to field-tested, evidence-informed and evidence-based programs strategies and high-quality research.


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  • We tend to study health inequalities as differentials in disease and death that exist within a population. But the most important cause of health inequality is social stratification, and social stratification only varies between populations. Here, I highlight a way forward in the study of health inequality that resolves this mismatch of analytical levels: we must study the fundamental causes as…
    February 2020
    Social/Structural Determinants
  • This summary of the literature on Housing Instability as a social determinant of health is a narrowly defined examination that is not intended to be exhaustive and may not address all dimensions of the issue. Please note: The terminology used in each summary is consistent with the respective references. For additional information on cross-cutting topics, please see the Incarceration, …
    January 2020
    Healthy Housing
  • Transgender people experience intersecting forms of social marginalization and are disproportionately affected by health inequities. We elucidate a novel conceptual framework for transgender health research that theorizes the constructs and pathways through which social inequities produce health inequities for transgender populations. Drawing on theories of intersectionality and structural…
    October 2019
    Systemic Determinants, Transphobia
  • In this blog post, Dr. Kean-Seng Lim explains the "curb-cut effect," and how we can leverage group-specific health equity actions to  result in improvements for others.  #P4HEwebinarMarch2023
    May 2019
  • The Office of Developmental Primary Care facilitated two discussion groups in order to learn more about the experiences of people with disabilities and their families in accessing the health care system. Discussion topics included communication, personal life values, changes in or loss of function, medical decision-making, and end of life care conversations. Our ultimate purpose was to uncover…
    January 2019
  • This article arises out of our work over several decades in the evaluation field and in philanthropy with a focus on designing and facilitating the implementation of systems-change strategies and evaluation. It addresses our current thinking about how foundations and communities can work within complex systems to identify key levers for change and use evaluation to track progress and assess…
    March 2018
    Systemic Determinants
  • In the wake of the waves of women speaking out about sexual harassment; gerrymandering rising to the level of a US Supreme Court case; inaction on gun control in the face of multiple mass shootings; and the riots around the removal of Civil War-era confederate monuments, there is an awareness that these events have affected the health and well-being of our communities. Public health professionals…
    February 2018
    Social/Structural Determinants, Systemic Determinants
  • Community-based participatory research (CBPR) answers the call for more patient-centered, community-driven research approaches to address growing health disparities. CBPR is a collaborative research approach that equitably involves community members, researchers, and other stakeholders in the research process and recognizes the unique strengths that each bring. The aim of CBPR is to combine…
    January 2018
    Community-rooted/Participatory Research
  • In a report designed to increase consensus around meaning of health equity, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) provides the following definition: “Health equity means that everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible. This requires removing obstacles to health such as poverty, discrimination, and their consequences, including powerlessness and lack of access to…
    May 2017
    Policy and Practice, Social Environment
  • Idealized versions of health care are common, and access to health care is often viewed as an unambiguous good. In the social determinants of health literature, for example, access to health care is treated as an intermediate determinant of health. This conceals a simplistic inference: the better your access to health care, the better your health. The reality is more complex: a modern industrial…
    January 2017
    Services & Programs, Social/Structural Determinants, Historical Trauma, Systemic Determinants
  • Significant progress has been made in maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH) in recent decades. Between 1990 and 2015, the global mortality rate for children under age five years dropped by 53 percent, from 90.6 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 42.5 in 2015 (Liu and others 2016). Maternal mortality is also on the decline globally.1 Despite progress, maternal, neonatal, and under-…
    April 2016
    Maternal/Child Health
  • The environmental and health consequences of climate change, which disproportionately affect low-income countries and poor people in high-income countries, profoundly affect human rights and social justice. Environmental consequences include increased temperature, excess precipitation in some areas and droughts in others, extreme weather events, and increased sea level. These consequences…
    November 2015
    Climate Change, Environmental Injustice
  • When it comes to our bodies, data abounds. We all have a blood pressure, weight, cholesterol levels,A1c, BMI, and more. We have risks, too. We might have or be at risk for cancer, or heart disease, or have a higher risk of experiencing a side effect of a medication or treatment than someone else.In theory, this data can help us make better decisions about our health. Should I take this pill? Will…
    January 2014
    Communication
  • Intersectionality is a theoretical framework that posits that multiple social categories (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status) intersect at the micro level of individual experience to reflect multiple interlocking systems of privilege and oppression at the macro, social-structural level (e.g., racism, sexism, heterosexism). Public health’s commitment to social…
    June 2012
    Social Environment, Sexism
  • Racial scholars argue that racism produces rates of morbidity, mortality, and overall well-being that vary depending on socially assigned race. Eliminating racism is therefore central to achieving health equity, but this requires new paradigms that are responsive to structural racism's contemporary influence on health, health inequities, and research. Critical Race Theory is an emerging…
    April 2010
    Systemic Determinants, Racism
  • The fields of health equity and human rights have different languages, perspectives, and tools for action, yet they share several foundational concepts. This paper explores connections between human rights and health equity, focusing particularly on the implications of current knowledge of how social conditions may influence health and health inequalities, the metric by which health equity is…
    January 2010
    Policy and Practice, Environment/Context
  • Improving population health requires understanding and changing societal structures and functions, but countervailing forces sometimes undermine those changes, thus reflecting the adaptive complexity inherent in public health systems. The purpose of this paper is to propose systems thinking as a conceptual rubric for the practice of team science in public health, and transdisciplinary,…
    August 2008
    Systemic Determinants
  • The biopsychosocial model is both a philosophy of clinical care and a practical clinical guide. Philosophically, it is a way of understanding how suffering, disease, and illness are affected by multiple levels of organization, from the societal to the molecular. At the practical level, it is a way of understanding the patient’s subjective experience as an essential contributor to accurate…
    November 2004
    Social/Structural Determinants
  • Despite the advances of modern epidemiology, the field remains limited in its ability to explain why certain outcomes occur and to generate the kind of findings that can be translated into programs or policies to improve health. Creating community partnerships such that community representatives participate in the definition of the research problem, interpretation of the data, and application of…
    May 2004
    Chronic Disease, Communicable Disease, Environmental/Community Health

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