About The Resilience Institute

The Resilience Institute is part of WWU Huxley’s College of the Environment. It facilitates scholarship, education, and practice on reducing social and physical vulnerability through sustainable community development, as a way to minimize loss and enhance recovery from disasters in Washington State and its interdependent global communities.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Social Determinants of Health

Kudos to Clark Williams-Derry at the Sightline Institute for his post skewering the New York Times' recent article on growing life expectancy disparities between rich and poor.

While I don't entirely agree with him that the article will not be surprising to some (maybe I'm more cynical?), I do agree that the article does a poor job discussing the links between wealth and health. If you read Clark's post, you'll get a great overview (and links to more) of issues related to socio-economic determinants of health. To the disaster folks out there, this is basically the progression of vulnerability from root causes to dynamic pressures to unsafe conditions.

By the way, Western Washington University is lucky to have a (recently hired) expert on this subject: Liz Mogford.

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