Structural Racism and the Social Determinants of Health

The World Health Organization describes the Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) as “the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age” which account for most health inequities, or the “unfair and avoidable differences in health status.” In public health, these are often discussed as the ‘causes of the causes.’ Despite decades of research and broad efforts, troubling health inequities between racial/ethnic groups persist in the US. While interpersonal discrimination plays a clear role in perpetuating these disparities, the entrenched role of structural racism has more recently come under investigation by population health researchers. By structural racism, we mean a “system (consisting of structures, policies, practices and norms) that structures opportunity and assigns value based on phenotype,” which “unfairly disadvantages some individuals and communities” while “unfairly advantaging” others. In this lecture, we will explore the SDOH, examining the ways in which our environments and conditions affect human health and well-being. We will dive deeper to examine how structural racism becomes embodied to create and perpetuate disparate health outcomes and discuss ways to disrupt health inequity.