Towards a People's Social Epidemiology: Pursuit of a more inclusive and equitable paradigm for social epi research and practice in the 21st century

BACKGROUND: Social epidemiology (SE) has made critical contributions to understanding and improving population health. However, critical examination reveals that, for a field so explicitly concerned about the social production of health, there is a surprising lack of attention to the social production (and utility) of its science. Indeed, “social” epi has largely been a “private” epi, with credentialed outside researchers extracting data from supposedly agency-less “n’s” in a manner that obfuscates the pathways of accountability for their health, effectively curtailing social action potential. A way forward is promised in the nexus of CBPR/PAR and information communication technologies (ICTs). ICTs rooted in CBPR/PAR afford the opportunity to move towards a more inclusive and participatory SE—that is, ICTs present as an avenue to democratize SE research/practice and allow for a truly “social” SE, wherein "n's" are also people.

OBJECTIVE: Develop and field-test a framework for A People’s Social Epi(PPLSE) that: 1) explicitly engages the social production of health and SE science; 2) explicitly engages concerns around equity, inclusion, participation, agency, and accountability; 3) affords opportunities for “n’s” to shape research/practice for social action; and 4) builds and institutionalizes local people capacity to do SE for their own social action goals.

APPROACH: A 3-tiered PPLSE framework was developed drawing from existent SE, CBPR/PAR, and ICT literatures. This framework was then applied to an intergenerational CBPR/PAR study of place, embodiment, and health. Parent-child dyads were recruited from public housing and trained in 4 PAR methods: Photovoice, Activity Space Mapping, X-Ray Mapping, Participatory GIS. Participants documented and integrated their place-health findings via a collaborative multimedia-enabled web-based community mapping platform.

RESULTS: Integrating PAR methods via/with ICTs, participants effectively modeled what PPLSE might look like in practice--simultaneously serving as "n's", people, researchers, constituents, and agents. This presentation will introduce a PPLSE framework, discuss  its theoretical/conceptual foundations and 5 core components in application, and discuss applications/implications for SE research/practice going forward.