Tag Archives: Determinants

Health Disparities and the Risks of Social Determinants for COVID-19 – 14 Months of Evidence

In April 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control issued a report featuring evidence that in the month of March 2020, the coronavirus pandemic was not an equal-opportunity killer. Within just a couple of months of COVID-19 emerging in America, it became clear that health disparities were evident in outcomes due to complications from the… Read More »

The Unsurprising Surprise of Social Determinants in COVID-19 Mortality

“Covid-19 exposes America’s racial health gap,” asserts The Economist, the weekly news magazine based in London, UK, in an advanced essay dated 11 April 2020. The subtitle of the piece: “African-Americans appear more vulnerable to the virus.” The phrase, “your ZIP code is more important than your genetic code” has become the common mantra for… Read More »

Why Social Determinants of Health raise the question, ‘Now What?’

From Hippocrates to Doogie Howser, physicians both real and fictional have understood that improving the health of their patients requires an inquiry deeper than the sciences of physical medicine. Great physicians look beyond the physical variables to a person’s social context—the state of their housing, food, transportation, family life and other matters that contribute to… Read More »