Action to Improve Social Determinants of Health: Outcomes of Leadership and Advocacy Training for Community Residents

2020 ◽  
pp. 152483992095629
Author(s):  
Ashley Wennerstrom ◽  
Julia Silver ◽  
Miranda Pollock ◽  
Jeanette Gustat

Racial and ethnic disparities remain a public health problem and are largely due to social determinants of health (SDOH). Using an adapted 36-hour community health worker (CHW) curriculum, we trained 42 lay community residents in New Orleans, Louisiana, neighborhoods experiencing disparities in leadership and advocacy skills to address SDOH. Six months posttraining, 29 participants completed a follow-up survey and interview. Participants described increases in knowledge, self-efficacy, and activities related to leadership and advocacy at all levels of the social ecological model. We also found a significant increase in communicating with Louisiana state senators or representatives (p < .0339). Our findings show that an adapted CHW training curriculum focused on SDOH, leadership, and advocacy can be used to train lay community residents in how to make changes in the community conditions that affect health and prompt new engagement to address SDOH at all levels of the social ecological model. Future efforts to increase lay community participation in addressing SDOH may benefit from providing ongoing support to participants such as organizing meetings with residents interested in similar topics, offering opportunities to “shadow” experienced CHWs, or hosting additional skills building workshops.

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Taylor ◽  
Greer Lamaro Haintz

Refugees in Australia are not fully utilising the healthcare system for several reasons and this may be affecting their overall health outcomes. This qualitative systematic review examined the influence of the social determinants of health on refugees’ access to healthcare services in Australia. Electronic databases were searched using terms relating to refugees, social determinants, healthcare services, barriers, enablers and Australia. Only peer-reviewed studies published in English since 2006, which focused on refugees and specifically discussed social determinants influencing refugees’ access to healthcare services in Australia, were included. The studies were critically analysed using standard Critical Appraisal Skills Programme Tools. Eight studies were included in the review. Findings reveal multiple factors influence refugees’ access to healthcare in Australia, and these can be conceptualised within a social-ecological model of health; that is, they operate across individual, interpersonal, environmental, organisational and policy levels. The novel finding of this review was the re-occurrence of similar influences across multiple healthcare service settings in Australia. The prevalence and re-occurring nature of the social determinants of health suggests that refugees are experiencing multilayered barriers to accessing Australian healthcare. All levels of a social-ecological model must be addressed in any attempt to break down these barriers.


2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 564-572
Author(s):  
Ashley Wennerstrom ◽  
Julia Silver ◽  
Miranda Pollock ◽  
Jeanette Gustat

Disparities in chronic disease and life expectancy remain a significant public health problem and are largely attributable to social determinants of health. Community health workers (CHWs) promote health equity through individual- and community-level activities, and leadership and advocacy skills training make CHWs more likely to catalyze structural change. CHWs are increasingly being integrated into clinical practices to support care management, creating a need for new grassroots community-level advocates. We adapted for community residents an existing CHW training curriculum focused on social determinants of health and effecting community change. We offered 36 hours of training at community-based locations in New Orleans, Louisiana. We assessed baseline civic and community participation and pre- and postknowledge for each lesson. Among 43 enrollees, 42 completed the program. The majority were Black (92.7%), female (92.7%), and retired or unemployed (77.5%), with a median age of 61.5 years. In the past year, 85% of participants had volunteered, 57.1% had been involved with a community organization, and 32.4% had contacted the city council. Participants demonstrated statistically significant increases in knowledge in 5 of 6 lessons. Our success in increasing knowledge of advocacy among a civically engaged group suggests that trainees may become community leaders in addressing social determinants of health.


2019 ◽  
Vol 101 (4) ◽  
pp. 357-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saty Satya-Murti ◽  
Jennifer Gutierrez

The Los Angeles Plaza Community Center (PCC), an early twentieth-century Los Angeles community center and clinic, published El Mexicano, a quarterly newsletter, from 1913 to 1925. The newsletter’s reports reveal how the PCC combined walk-in medical visits with broader efforts to address the overall wellness of its attendees. Available records, some with occasional clinical details, reveal the general spectrum of illnesses treated over a twelve-year span. Placed in today’s context, the medical care given at this center was simple and minimal. The social support it provided, however, was multifaceted. The center’s caring extended beyond providing medical attention to helping with education, nutrition, employment, transportation, and moral support. Thus, the social determinants of health (SDH), a prominent concern of present-day public health, was a concept already realized and practiced by these early twentieth-century Los Angeles Plaza community leaders. Such practices, although not yet nominally identified as SDH, had their beginnings in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century social activism movement aiming to mitigate the social ills and inequities of emerging industrial nations. The PCC was one of the pioneers in this effort. Its concerns and successes in this area were sophisticated enough to be comparable to our current intentions and aspirations.


Author(s):  
Sridhar Venkatapuram

The term health disparities (also called health inequalities) refers to the differences in health outcomes and related events across individuals and social groups. Social determinants of health, meanwhile, refers to certain types of causes of ill health in individuals, including lack of early infant care and stimulation, lack of safe and secure employment, poor housing conditions, discrimination, lack of self-respect, poor personal relationships, low community cohesion, and income inequality. These social determinants stand in contrast to others, such as individual biology, behaviors, and proximate exposures to harmful agents. This chapter presents some of the revolutionary findings of social epidemiology and the science of social determinants of health, and shows how health disparities and social determinants raise profound questions in public health ethics and social/global justice philosophy.


Author(s):  
Kristen A. Berg ◽  
Jarrod E. Dalton ◽  
Douglas D. Gunzler ◽  
Claudia J. Coulton ◽  
Darcy A. Freedman ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ethan Cowan ◽  
Maria R. Khan ◽  
Siri Shastry ◽  
E. Jennifer Edelman

AbstractThe COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in unparalleled societal disruption with wide ranging effects on individual liberties, the economy, and physical and mental health. While no social strata or population has been spared, the pandemic has posed unique and poorly characterized challenges for individuals with opioid use disorder (OUD). Given the pandemic’s broad effects, it is helpful to organize the risks posed to specific populations using theoretical models. These models can guide scientific inquiry, interventions, and public policy. Models also provide a visual image of the interplay of individual-, network-, community-, structural-, and pandemic-level factors that can lead to increased risks of infection and associated morbidity and mortality for individuals and populations. Such models are not unidirectional, in that actions of individuals, networks, communities and structural changes can also affect overall disease incidence and prevalence. In this commentary, we describe how the social ecological model (SEM) may be applied to describe the theoretical effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on individuals with opioid use disorder (OUD). This model can provide a necessary framework to systematically guide time-sensitive research and implementation of individual-, community-, and policy-level interventions to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on individuals with OUD.


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