New Horizons in Health: An Integrative Approach

Excerpt

The committee recommends 10 priority areas for research investment to integrate the behavioral, social, and biomedical sciences at the National Institutes of Health: Predisease pathways—identify early and long-term biological, behavioral, psychological, and social precursors to disease; Positive health—identify biological, behavioral, and psychosocial factors that contribute to resilience, disease resistance, and wellness; Gene expression—understand environmentally induced gene expression and its connection to positive and negative health outcomes; Personal ties—explicate the mechanisms by which proximal social interactions influence health and disease outcomes; Healthy communities—identify the collective properties of social and physical environments that influence health and disease outcomes; Inequality—clarify the mechanisms through which socioeconomic hierarchies, racism, discrimination, and stigmatization influence health and disease outcomes; Population health—understand macro-level trends in health status and evaluate the performance of the health care system; Interventions—expand the scope and effectiveness of strategies for social and behavioral interventions to improve health; Methodology—develop new measurement techniques and study designs to link information across levels of analysis (molecular, cellular, behavioral, psychosocial, community) and across time; Infrastructure—establish ways to maintain long-term study populations and to train scientists to integrate health-related knowledge across multiple disciplines.