Americans are less healthy and living shorter lives – with large health disparities across social class, race, and gender – than citizens of other high-income nations, despite increasing resources in health care in the U.S.
These trends are fueling research interest in population health and were the focus of a conference held at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. on September 29.
According to conference co-organizer Michelle Frisco, associate professor of sociology and demography and associate director of Population Research Institute at Penn State, the conference aimed to connect scholars from diverse disciplines such as medicine, demography, sociology, psychology, and economics.
“The factors that shape population health problems are wide ranging and studied by researchers with very different areas of expertise,” Frisco explained. “For example, the physical environment of one’s neighborhood, social status, genetic predispositions, and physiological processes all contribute to population health problems like cancer, obesity and poor mental health. But connecting population health researchers and knowledge across fields to better understand how these phenomena drive population health problems can be challenging.”
Frisco said there isn’t a natural venue for population health scientists from different perspectives to share research and build new interdisciplinary collaborative projects. Instead, professional societies typically connect scientists within a discipline. “Even when collaborations occur, dissemination of findings is often limited to outlets that target specific disciplines.”
Frisco is working to change that by developing a series of conferences to connect population health scientists from various disciplines so they can share knowledge that can be used to help improve the health of the U.S. population and reduce social disparities.
At the first conference, over 20 different disciplines were represented, including participants working in academia, government, non-profits and the private sector. Experts presented new research on topics including health disparities, mental health, obesity, and technological innovations in population heath.
Keynote panels were designed to show how research can inform intervention. “In one panel, a researcher presented findings showing how a higher social status was linked to better health outcomes, while a doctor explained how using this knowledge in clinical settings was helping disadvantaged patients seek services to improve their social position and in turn improve their health,” said Frisco. The full agenda of the conference is available online.
The second and third conferences will be larger, multi-day events. “The conference series will create an interdisciplinary network of scientists who will have a venue to meet, share knowledge and develop collaborative research projects,” Frisco said. “We also want to make the next two conferences more relevant to practitioners and policy makers who can use research to improve population health.”
The conferences are being funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and are a collaboration between Penn State’s Population Research Institute in the Social Science Research Institute, the Institute for Policy and Social Research at the University of Kansas, and the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science. The initial conference was also co-sponsored by the Institute of Medicine Roundtable on Population Health Improvement. The second conference will be held at Penn State in September 2016, and will be open to the public. To be added to the conference mailing list, contact pophealth@pop.psu.edu.