Framing social determinants of health within the professional public health community: research translation and implications for policy change

ABSTRACT

Despite what experts know about the importance of social determinants of health (SDOH), poor health is generally understood by the public as an individual problem ameliorated through lifestyle and/or healthcare. To remedy this knowledge gap and promote policy change, public health professionals are investing in media advocacy to raise public awareness about SDOH and promote collective responsibility for health improvement. However, policy theory suggests this may be insufficient. More attention to the role of professional communities, as mediators of research translation and important policy actors, is warranted. We conducted a content analysis of news articles published by the American Public Health Association and found substantial attention to SDOH. However, the discourse was more biomedical than expected given the evidence regarding the relative importance of the major categories of health determinants. This may be a barrier to policy change and detract from the field’s efforts to promote political action.

KEYWORDS:

• Social determinants of health
• health disparities
• public health
• framing
• public policy

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Kalahn Taylor-Clark for her contributions to the design of this study. We acknowledge the University of Delaware Undergraduate Research Program for providing funding for two undergraduate research assistants, Christopher Campbell and Jason Freeman, whom we thank for their assistance with data collection. We are also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers, whose questions and suggestions helped to substantially improve this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.