Health Disparities: A Life Course Health Development Perspective and Future Research Directions

Kandyce Larson; Shirley A. Russ; Robert S. Kahn; Glenn Flores; Elizabeth Goodman; Tina L. Cheng; Neal Halfon

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-47143-3_20

Health Disparities: A Life Course Health Development Perspective and Future Research Directions

Review

In: Handbook of Life Course Health Development [Internet]. Cham (CH): Springer; 2018.

2017 Nov 21.

Authors

Kandyce Larson¹, Shirley A. Russ², Robert S. Kahn³, Glenn Flores⁴, Elizabeth Goodman⁵, Tina L. Cheng⁶, Neal Halfon^{7

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Book Editors

Neal Halfon¹, Christopher B. Forrest², Richard M. Lerner³, Elaine M. Faustman⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Research, American Academy of Pediatrics, 141 Northwest Point Boulevard, Elk Grove Village, IL, 60007, USA
² UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families, and Communities, Department of Pediatrics, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA
³ Division of General and Community Pediatrics, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, OH, USA
⁴ Medica Research Institute, Division of Health Policy and Management, University of Minnesota School of Public Health, Minneapolis, MN, USA
⁵ Division of General Academic Pediatrics, Mass General Hospital for Children, Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
⁶ Department of Pediatrics, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA
⁷ Department of Pediatrics, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA
⁸ Department of Health Policy and Management, Fielding School of Public Health, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA
⁹ Department of Public Policy, Luskin School of Public Affairs, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA
¹⁰ Center for Healthier Children, Families, and Communities, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Book Affiliations

¹ Department of Pediatrics, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA
² Applied Clinical Research Center Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
³ Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts, USA
⁴ Institute for Risk Analysis and Risk Communication, Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA

Excerpt

Historically, research examining health status disparities between members in different socioeconomic status and racial/ethnic groups often focused on adults and the concurrent lifestyle factors that might explain health differentials. Recent years have witnessed an explosion of interest in the developmental origins of adult health and disease, and life course-oriented research has proliferated across the social, biological, and health sciences. This chapter describes how an integrated life course health development framework can be applied to advance our understanding of the dynamic and multilevel processes contributing to health disparities across lifetimes and even generations. Examples of recent research that has examined health status disparities from a life course perspective are provided, and research gaps and challenges are reviewed. The chapter concludes with a set of recommendations for a more strategic and responsive life course-informed research agenda that not only can fill in gaps in current knowledge, but also pave the way for the translation of this knowledge into improvement in practice, programs, and policy aimed at alleviating health disparities.

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