New Research Findings on Social Justice and Public Health

This presentation provides an overview of recent research on social justice and public health. One important theme is the persistence of socioeconomic status (SES) and racial/ethnic disparities across the continuum of health. Recent research has also situated these disparities within the context of the relatively poor ranking of health in the United States compared to other societies, and showed that they have profound economic costs for U.S. society. Another important line of recent research documents the persistence of racism in U.S. society and the multiple ways in which racism has adverse consequences for health. There is also growing research attention to the biological mechanisms and processes by which the social environment affects health, and to generating high-quality empirical evidence that interventions on upstream determinants can improve health and reduce inequities in health.