In Canada, falls are one of the leading causes of injury and deaths for seniors. These types of injuries can typically be avoided through falls prevention programs, and past studies suggest that these health services have significantly reduced seniors’ falls risk and rates in Canada. Despite the abundance of falls prevention research, practices and programs available in the country, Aboriginal Elders remain overrepresented in fall-related injury and fatality rates. The elevated rates of falls for Aboriginal Elders indicate that current falls prevention programs and standards may not be reaching those most vulnerable to fall hazards and injuries. My thesis is written in the publishable paper format and is comprised of two papers. Using an exploratory case study methodology in paper one, I investigated the social determinants of health that Inuvialuit Elders and LFPPs identify as factors that increase, decrease, or have no effect on the likelihood of an Inuvialuit Elder experiencing a fall. Together, we found that personal health status and conditions, personal health practices and coping skills, physical environments, social support networks, and access to health services increase Inuvialuit Elders likelihood of experiencing a fall, health practices and coping skills and access to health services decrease Inuvialuit Elders likelihood of experiencing a fall, and culture has no affect on the likelihood of Inuvialuit Elders experiencing a fall. In paper two, I used a participatory action research approach informed by postcolonial theory to examine what current falls prevention recommendations are offered by local falls prevention programmers (LFPPs) in order to reduce fall rates among Inuvialuit Elders in Inuvik, Northwest Territories, Canada; and to understand how falls prevention programs for Inuvialuit Elders can be co-created with participants to be culturally safe. In it, I provide the recommended strategies of developing and implementing a culturally safe falls prevention program for Inuvialuit Elders, as suggested by the LFPPs and Inuvialuit Elders who participated in the research. Taken together, the papers in this thesis make it apparent that research concerning falls prevention for Aboriginal Elders and falls prevention programs continues to be influenced by colonial practices. As a result, there is a demonstrated need for program development and research in this area to work towards reducing health disparities and challenging colonial practices.

There is limited knowledge on the sexual health behaviors of young adults with physical disabilities, as people with disabilities have traditionally been treated homogenously without acknowledgement of the potential differences between disability types. The objective of this study was twofold. The first goal was to take a novel approach by guidance of the Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) framework to compare how young adults with physical disabilities compare against those without physical disabilities in: 1) vaginal sexual activity, 2) condom usage, and 3) the effect of SDOH factors as potential mediators in predicting unprotected vaginal sex. Relatedly, the second goal was to investigate whether there was a difference in condom usage based on disability type criteria, specifically examining membership into the following impairment groups: physical disability, chronic health conditions, vision impairments, hearing impairments, and stuttering/stammering problems. This study employed secondary data analysis based on data from the National Longitudinal Adolescent to Adult Health Survey (ADD Health) – Wave III, in-home interview, public-use dataset. The variables used for the SDOH proxies were job status, student status, housing type, level of education, mentor status, cohabitation status, and health insurance status. Additionally, other social and demographic factors were also accounted in the model: age, race/ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation. Results from bivariate regression suggest that only those young adults with visual impairments and those with stuttering/stammering issues are less likely to engage in sexual activity when compared to their healthy counterparts. Regarding condom usage among sexually active individuals, those with physical disabilities, chronic health conditions, and hearing impairments may be less likely to use protection than their counterparts. However, further investigation revealed that the associations between condom usage and those disability type groups are mediated by 1 of the 7 measures of SDOH (cohabitation status) and three demographic factors – gender, race, and age. Hence, it is not the disability type that reduces safe sex practices compliance, but rather that those disability groups are associated to social and demographic factors that are, in turn, linked to unsafe sex practices. Furthermore, it appears that irrespective of disability membership, gender, age, race, and cohabitation status are all associated with condom use compliance. Findings advocate for a supplementary investigation of the relative contributions of the particular social factors that mediate the effect between disability status and condom usage.

The disparity in life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations, including within high-income countries, is driven by a heightened risk of cardio-metabolic diseases. The current study recruited independent panels of experts in Indigenous cardio-metabolic health from Australia, New Zealand and the United States, in order to establish local consensus opinion and initiate dialogue on appropriate prevention strategies. Therefore, a three-round Delphi process was used to consolidate and compare the opinions of 60 experts, 20 from each country. Round one, the experts were asked twelve open-ended questions across six domains: (i) prevention; (ii) consultation; (iii) educational resources; (iv) societal issues; (v) workforce issues; (vi) culture and family. Round two, the experts completed a structured questionnaire based on results from the first round, in which they ranked items according to their importance. Final round, the experts were asked to re-rank the same items after receiving summary feedback about the rank ordering from the previous round. Several themes emerged common to all three countries: (i) socio-economic and education inequalities should be addressed; (ii) educational, behaviour change and prevention strategies should address physical environmental determinants and be responsive to the local context, including being culturally appropriate; and (iii) cultural appropriateness can be achieved through consultation with Indigenous communities, cultural competency training, use of Indigenous health workers, and use of appropriate role models. These findings highlight several key priorities that can be used to initiate dialogue on appropriate prevention strategies. Such strategies should be contextualized to the local Indigenous populations.

This is an inter-disciplinary argument for a moral entitlement to a capability to be healthy. Motivated by the goal to make a human right to health intelligible and justifiable, the thesis extends the capability approach, advocated by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, to the theory and practice of the human health sciences. Moral claims related to human health are considered at the level of ethical theory, or a level of abstraction where principles of social justice that determine the purpose, form, and scope of basic social institutions are proposed, evaluated, and justified. The argument includes 1) a conception of health as capability, 2) a theory of causation and distribution of health capability as well as 3) an argument for the moral entitlement to a sufficient and equitable capability to be healthy grounded in the respect for human dignity. Moreover, the entitlement to the capability to be healthy is defended against alternative ethical approaches that focus on welfare or resources in evaluating and satisfying health claims. In specific, it is argued that human health is best understood as a capability to be healthy - a meta-capability to achieve a cluster of basic and inter-related capabilities and functionings. Such a cluster of capabilities and functionings is in line with Martha Nussbaum's central human capabilities. A theory of causation and distribution of health capability is put forward that integrates the 'classic' biomedical factors of disease (genetic endowment, exposure to hazardous materials, behaviour), social determinants of disease, and Drèze and Sen's econometric analysis of the causation and distribution of acute and endemic malnutrition. Furthermore, the argument critiques Norman Daniels's revised Rawlsian theory of health justice, and advocates for the capability approach to recognize group capabilities in light of 'population health' phenomena. Lastly, the thesis also argues that a coherent, capability conception of health as a species-wide conception will tend to make any theory of justice recognizing health claims a cosmopolitan theory of justice.

Official-language minorities in Canada may face specific issues in accessing health care services that can lead to negative consequences on their health, utilization of health care services and satisfaction with the health care system. A secondary data analysis of the 2006 Survey on the Vitality of Official-Language Minorities revealed significant differences between the Anglophone minority (n=5,161) and the Francophone minority (n=12,029) with regards to general health, and access to and use of health care services. Important predictors of these outcomes included age, education level, household income, marital status and place of residence (urban/rural). Access to health care services in the minority language was associated with self-perceived health in the Anglophone minority only. Health policy recommendations elaborated in light of the findings include working on both the supply and the demand of health care services offered in the two official languages, while taking into consideration important contextual differences between regions.

Disaster vulnerability and health status are determined by the intersecting social identities individuals possess in a given context. Based on two months fieldwork in Bangladesh, this study employs a comparative exploratory case study methodology to understand the way in which the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Oxfam and Gonoshasthaya Kendra construct and deploy the concepts of gender, empowerment and women’s health within their disaster management policies and programs. It finds that disaster management interventions that fail to understand the intersectional nature of women’s vulnerability risk entrenching or creating forms of both privilege and oppression. Combining intersectionality, Moser’s Practical and Strategic Gender Needs and Sen’s Capability Approach, this study aims to deconstruct the embedded view of women in disaster management by suggesting that a social determinants of health approach, paired with intersectionality, could provide important insights into disaster management interventions and their effectiveness in addressing the gendered realities of women facing disasters.

Introduction: Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease that causes significant morbidity and mortality. Despite the fact that the total burden of TB has decreased dramatically, the distribution of that burden across the Canadian population has not changed. A century ago, the Indigenous population of Canada had a significantly higher TB mortality than the non-Indigenous population. This gap still exists today. TB is a disease of poverty, and understanding the role of the social determinants of health (SDH) may provide insights into the causes of persistence of TB in the Indigenous population. Research questions: This thesis tackles three questions: 1) Can a TB outbreak that took place over a century ago be reconstructed? 2) What can we learn about the relationship between the disease, the population it afflicted, and the environment in which the outbreak took place? 3) How can reconstruction of a TB outbreak be used to evaluate policy interventions? Area studied: Analyses were limited to the Qu’Appelle Agency, located in Southeastern Saskatchewan. Methodology: An agent-based model of socioeconomic environment of the Qu’Appelle Agency was developed to study the relationship between TB and SDH. Data on TB mortality, demographics, agricultural production, material circumstances, and economic factors of production were used to study the relationship between TB and SDH at the aggregate level. Results: 1) Extensive aggregate data analyses were carried out and an agent-based model of TB transmission and of the socioeconomic environment of the Qu’Appelle Agency was developed. 2) Results of these analyses identify a number of important parameters responsible for the high TB mortality in the Agency. These parameters include biological factors, housing, social characteristics, agricultural output, and policies of the Department of Indian Affairs. Conclusions: This research demonstrates that reconstruction of an outbreak of an infectious disease that took place over a century ago is a complex undertaking that hinges on availability of data and significant expertise in a variety of fields, such as health sciences, economics, mathematics, and modelling approaches. The further one goes into the past, the more one is forced to rely on assumptions, which make the reconstructed web of relationships between agent, host, and environment that caused the outbreak less certain. Despite the inherent uncertainty, the process of outbreak reconstruction provides a deep and multi-faceted understanding of the interactions among the agent, the host, and the environment. The resulting model is a useful way of studying policy interventions that could be applied in other contexts as well – to other infectious diseases or TB outbreaks on other reserves. Keywords: [population health, epidemiology, tuberculosis, Indigenous peoples, agent-based modelling, social determinants of health]

Ongoing research indicates that the burden of infection and mortality from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been disproportionately borne by Latinx populations in the United States (U.S.). While Latinx people account for 18.4% of the U.S. population, they make up 23.1% of total COVID-19 cases and almost 38% of all COVID-19-related-deaths in the U.S. Latinx people face systemic socioeconomic and political challenges that adversely impact their risk of exposure to and recovery from COVID-19. This investigation will discuss the health disparities experienced by the U.S. Latinx population that have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, with a particular focus on the social determinants of health (SDOH) and the unmet social needs for this population.

Thesis advisor: Rebekah L. Coley / Recent decades have witnessed the increasing spatial concentration of poverty and affluence in the United States (Biscoff & Reardon, 2013). Given well-documented links between neighborhood economic contexts and wellbeing (Chow et al., 2005), this has the potential to exacerbate disparities in health, particularly for people with limited neighborhood choice. However, limited research has systematically examined the neighborhood features underlying these links. A more nuanced understanding of why neighborhood poverty matters is essential for promoting equitable neighborhood development. Using rigorous analytic techniques that account for the dynamic nature of neighborhoods and help adjust for selection bias, I considered two complementary questions: 1) do observed neighborhood resources and stressors mediate associations between neighborhood poverty and wellbeing within and between individuals; and 2) how do observed versus perceived changes in neighborhood features mediate links between neighborhood poverty and wellbeing? I combined individual-level longitudinal data from the Post-Katrina Study of Resilience and Recovery with administrative neighborhood data drawn from the Census Bureau, FBI, and EPA. Analyses focused on a sample of 606 participants – primarily young Black mothers with low levels of income – who were affected by Hurricane Katrina, most of whom experienced some period of forced relocation. Participants were surveyed once before (2003/04) and twice after (2006/07; 2009) the hurricane. Results paint a complex picture. Contrasting with prior research, total effects of neighborhood poverty on wellbeing were limited. However, changes in neighborhood poverty were linked to wellbeing indirectly through intermediary neighborhood features, with results pointing to benefits and detriments of rising neighborhood poverty. Results were driven by those who changed neighborhoods over the course of the study. For participants that lived in the same New Orleans neighborhood across waves, changes in neighborhood poverty proved less consequential. Overall, results suggest that rather than treating neighborhood poverty as uniformly problematic for wellbeing, efforts to promote health equity should identify and build upon existing assets of neighborhoods, like affordability and amenity access, while also reducing stressors. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Counseling, Developmental and Educational Psychology.

This thesis investigates the impact of social determinants on life expectancy in 16 transition economies from 1995 to 2012 by a panel data regression analysis. The regression result suggests that, air quality, coverage for tertiary education, spending in health care have statistically positive associations with life expectancy. To be specific, 1 microgram per cubic meter reduction in PM 2.5 air pollution(mean annual exposure) is associated with a gain of 2.16 months of life expectancy at birth. 100 dollars increase in health expenditure per capita is associated with a gain of 2.4 months of life expectancy at birth. 10% points increase in the gross enrolment ratio for tertiary school is associated with a gain of 3.6 months of life expectancy. But the proxy variable of democracy(Unified Democracy Sores), Economic Freedom and out-of-pocket health expenditure are not significant factors of life expectancy.