The social environment and health

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Abel Olsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Environment ◽  
Socioeconomic Position ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Policy Options ◽  
Class A ◽  
Environment And Health ◽  
Causal Pathway ◽  
The Social ◽  
Life Circumstances ◽  
A Chain

This chapter explores three main issues related to the analyses of the social gradient in health: correlations, causations, and interventions. Observed correlations between indicators of socioeconomic position and health do not imply that there are causations. The usefulness of various indicators is discussed, such as education, income, occupation categories, and social class. A causal pathway is presented that suggests a chain from early life circumstances, via education, occupation, income, and perceived status onto health. The chapter ends with a discussion of various policy options to reduce inequalities in health that are caused by social determinants.

scholarly journals Social environment influences the relationship between genotype and gene expression in wild baboons

2013 ◽  
Vol 368 (1618) ◽  
pp. 20120345 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel E. Runcie ◽  
Ralph T. Wiedmann ◽  
Elizabeth A. Archie ◽  
Jeanne Altmann ◽  
Gregory A. Wray ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gene Expression ◽  
Individual Differences ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Group Size ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Social Connectedness ◽  
Dominance Rank ◽  
Social Stressors ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wild Baboons

Variation in the social environment can have profound effects on survival and reproduction in wild social mammals. However, we know little about the degree to which these effects are influenced by genetic differences among individuals, and conversely, the degree to which social environmental variation mediates genetic reaction norms. To better understand these relationships, we investigated the potential for dominance rank, social connectedness and group size to modify the effects of genetic variation on gene expression in the wild baboons of the Amboseli basin. We found evidence for a number of gene–environment interactions (GEIs) associated with variation in the social environment, encompassing social environments experienced in adulthood as well as persistent effects of early life social environment. Social connectedness, maternal dominance rank and group size all interacted with genotype to influence gene expression in at least one sex, and either in early life or in adulthood. These results suggest that social and behavioural variation, akin to other factors such as age and sex, can impact the genotype–phenotype relationship. We conclude that GEIs mediated by the social environment are important in the evolution and maintenance of individual differences in wild social mammals, including individual differences in responses to social stressors.

Race/ethnicity, the social environment, and health

1996 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marsha Lillie-Blanton ◽  
Thomas Laveist
Keyword(s):  
Social Environment ◽  
Environment And Health ◽  
The Social ◽  
Race Ethnicity

scholarly journals The social environment and health

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 244-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Marmot
Keyword(s):  
Social Environment ◽  
Environment And Health ◽  
The Social

scholarly journals Litter characteristics and helping context during early life shape the responsiveness of the stress axis in a wild cooperative breeder

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aurelie Cohas ◽  
Coraline Bichet ◽  
Rebecca Garcia ◽  
Sylvia Pardonnet ◽  
Sophie Lardy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Stress Response ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Hpa Axis ◽  
Stress Responses ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Stress Hormones ◽  
Stress Axis ◽  
Regulatory Processes ◽  
Individual Fitness ◽  
The Social

Stress responses have evolved to quickly and appropriately deal with environmental stressors in order to secure or restore homeostasis. Since the regulation of stress hormones plays a key adaptive role, the regulatory processes controlling stress hormones levels may be under high selective pressure. The social environment during early life (parents and litter characteristics) strongly affects ontogeny of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. In cooperative breeders, offspring are also confronted with helpers but whether and how variation in the helping context can affect HPA axis responsiveness of offspring remains unanswered. Combining dexamethasone suppression and adrenocorticotropic hormone stimulation tests, we investigated the link between the social environment and the characteristics of the HPA axis at the early stages of life in wild Alpine marmots. We show that when raised in the presence of helpers, marmot pups exhibit a greater capacity not only to mount, but also to turn off a stress response. The capacity to mount a stress response was also higher as the pups were raised in large litters. Determining impacts of such social modulation of the HPA axis functioning on individual fitness would make an important contribution to our understanding of the evolution of cooperative breeding.

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