Session: DIVERSITY NETWORK COMMITTEE INVITED SYMPOSIUM Prevention Pathways to Health Equity and Reducing Disparities: Exploring and Promoting Health and Well-being (Society for Prevention Research 25th Annual Meeting)

Disparities in morbidity and mortality permeate in the United States. Though it is important to acknowledge that not all ethnic minorities are poor and, neither are the poor all racial-ethnic minorities, there are voluminous amounts of data that point to societal differences in the rates of illness, disease, and death by race and socio-economic status. Across the life span, risk for various conditions affect less advantaged populations who are more likely to receive inadequate care prenatally, at increased risk for exposure to lead poisoning in childhood, are at higher risk for HIV in adolescence and adulthood, and as they age are at risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes. However, there are areas in which racial-ethnic minorities are not disproportionately affected by health disparities; for example racial-ethnic minorities are less likely to die from accidental causes as children, less likely to use some substances in early adolescence (though this shifts in later adolescence) and if they can survive the many chronic diseases that threaten their lives, actually exhibit a similar or longer lifespan among the elderly. Thus, when discussing health disparities, it is important to know what conditions do and do not exhibit disparities across race-ethnicity and social-class.

Numerous factors have been posed to affect disparities in health using an eco-developmental perspective. These factors individual factors related to healthy eating and lifestyles, family eating and health patterns, and community-wide access to healthy foods, safe activity spaces, and available and affordable health care. Though over the years examining health has been viewed as the purview of those in the medical and biological sciences, increasingly, social scientists are examining the implications of socio-behavioral models of prevention and promotion upon emotional and physical health indicators.

Parallel to the public health model, this proposed invited panel will explore research across the spectrums of epidemiology and prevention/intervention, with implications for practice and policy. The scholars involved in this panel will explore a number of topics including access to health care among immigrant Latino children, Latina mothers in Florida and their reducing risk for infant mortality, disparities in early and later youth risk for cardio-vascular disease, and importantly, the role of prevention in potentially reducing stress, genetic aging, and other important behavioral and health outcomes among African American families.

This potential invited panel for the Society for Prevention Research Annual Conference poses to describe and propose pathways for addressing health disparities affecting the less advantaged in the United States.