CDC Research on SDOH

CDC conducts and publishes research on social determinants of health (SDOH). This page provides a searchable list of recent CDC-authored peer-reviewed articles on various SDOH topics, categorized according to the Healthy People 2030 place-based framework:

• Economic Stability: The connection between the financial resources people have (e.g., income, cost of living, and socioeconomic status) and their health, including issues such as poverty, employment, food security, and housing stability.
• Education: The connection between education and health and well-being, including issues such as graduating from high school, enrollment in higher education, educational attainment, language and literacy, and early childhood education and development.
• Social and Community Context: The connection between characteristics of the contexts within which people live, learn, work, and play, and their health and well-being. Contextual factors include topics such as community cohesion, civic participation, discrimination, racism and xenophobia, cultural norms, interpersonal violence, workplace conditions, immigration status of people who migrated from less-developed countries, and incarceration.
• Health and Healthcare: The connection between people’s access to and understanding of health services and their own health, including issues such as access to healthcare, access to primary care, health insurance coverage, English language proficiency, health literacy, and when people migrate to the U.S. or move temporarily within the U.S. (e.g., refugees, migrant workers, foreign-born person)
• Neighborhood and Built Environment: The connection between where people live (e.g., housing, neighborhood, and environment) and their health and well-being, including topics such as housing quality; access to transportation; availability of healthy foods, water, and air quality; and community violence and other crimes in neighborhoods.
• General SDOH Topics and Methods: Broad SDOH or SDOH-related topics that do not neatly fit under HP 2030 SDOH domains, including such topics as methodologies, strategies, measurements, and policies.

Use the fields below to filter articles by the categories outlined above, and use the search box to further sort articles by keyword or author name. For more information about article selection, visit Frequently Asked Questions.