NIH Conference on Understanding and Reducing Disparities in Health: Behavioral and Social Sciences Research Contributions

Abstract

The conference focuses on three broad areas of action influencing health disparities: policy, prevention, and healthcare. It emphasize both basic research on the behavioral, social, and biomedical pathways giving rise to disparities in health and applied research on the development, testing, and delivery of interventions to reduce disparities in these three action areas. The conference employs a multi-level analytic framework (i.e., ranging from individuals to societies). It includes research relevant to a wide range of population groups (e.g., variation by SES, race, ethnicity, gender) residing in the United States, while not attempting to provide detailed analyses of each and every group. Consideration is given to multiple public health issues and their interactions (e.g., multiple morbidities rather than single illnesses) and to risk factors or causal processes common to various health conditions (e.g., smoking, diet, exercise, access to health care). http://obssr.