Friday, May 23, 2025
5/23/2025
SOCIAL MEDICINE CASES FOR HEALTH EQUITY - PA-21-151 UCB PI: Seth M. Holmes PROJECT SUMMARY Medical and public health research has shown how economic and social structures negatively shape health outcomes in minority populations. This research has foregrounded culture and access to healthcare as the dominant determinants of health outcomes. However, an improved understanding of the ways larger social processes, including structural racism, impact minority health and health disparities would enhance health services to minority populations and reduce health disparities. Most health care practitioners are not trained in social science frameworks, and most social scientists who do related research do not know how to translate their research to make it accessible and actionable by clinicians. This project contributes to reducing health disparities by organizing an interdisciplinary conference to bridge social science and clinical knowledge of health in minority populations - especially immigrant populations. The conference will be attended by social scientists, clinicians, policy makers and the general public. The conference will include panels and keynotes delivered by expert clinicians and social scientists to thematically orient the conference and disseminate cutting-edge research on minority health and health disparities. Presenters come from diverse backgrounds and have specialized knowledge of the key health issues facing minority populations in the United States, including such topics as sexual gender minorities, rural residents, and immigrant communities. In addition to the keynotes and panels, clinicians will present real case studies of minority patients for rigorous co-analysis with social scientists in small groups. Cases will include maternal mortality/morbidity and infant mortality and infectious diseases. These workshop sessions will be designed to use diverse disciplinary knowledge, methods, and theories to understand cases previously considered intractable in new ways, sensitive to the unique structural and socioeconomic contexts of each case. Group discussions will maintain a translational focus so as to produce actionable interventions, health systems innovations, and original programs for equitable health policy and practice, with a focus on patient-clinician communication in primary care. Findings from this conference will have a wide-spread, lasting influence through its dissemination in the “Case Studies in Social Medicine for Health Equity,” which has already been accepted for publication in The Lancet. By fostering interdisciplinary collaborations to reduce health disparities, this project will cultivate cross-sector partnerships, produce original knowledge on health equity, and promote the dissemination and translation of this knowledge into novel interventions suited to ameliorate health injustices in the long-term.
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