Embodying and weathering a (mis)education: Youth participatory action research for schooling as a social determinant of health

Based on research and findings from a mixed method, youth participatory action research (PAR) project, this paper introduces schooling is a social determinant of health. This paper describes the process and findings of the youth PAR collective “ProjectDISH (Disparities in Schooling and Health)” formed for this study. ProjectDISH youth researchers (ages 14-19) created the research questions, design and protocols (mapping, focus groups, and survey); conducted data collection and analysis; and presented at academic conferences. The purpose of our research was to investigate and document the ways in which schooling (as distinguished from education) affects health, and how racialized urban educational inequities and graduation rates contribute to health disparities. Research presented in this paper documents the health effects of educational asymmetries and opportunities to learn and introduces suggestions for educational improvement as health reform. This research explores how and why education (of all three components of SES) is the most significant predictor of lifetime health. It does so by taking an important methodological and conceptual stance to distinguish the schooling from education. Schooling is a process and a context that influences health in much the same way as other widely documented social determinants of health (many of which equally operate through schools), while education is an outcome and proxy that independently confers health benefits through social and causal pathways it affords. This paper spans conceptual and analytic frameworks from multiple disciplines.