Social Sciences & Health

The educational mission of the Social Sciences ad Health track is to prepare its graduates for scholarly and research careers in the four thematic areas below. Each theme addresses diverse populations and applies a lifespan approach. They also reflect a cross-cutting emphasis on developing novel methods for characterizing and reducing health inequities in vulnerable populations.

MEET OUR FACULTY

Outcome and Measurement Science

In order to improve health, we need to be able to evaluate the physical, mental, and social characteristics of health. Moreover, this goal must be accomplished in developmentally- and culturally-appropriate ways to address the needs of diverse populations across the lifespan. Measurement science tackles these goals in ways that are essential to promoting patient-centered, responsive, evidence-based, and cost-effective healthcare. Track faculty are renowned for leading the national trend toward measuring health from the perspective of people directly affected by a range of physical and mental disorders (i.e., patient-reported outcomes or PROs). They have extensive psychometric expertise and have lead development of ground-breaking  measurement systems such as PROMIS, Neuro-QoL, ASCQ-Me, and NIH Toolbox. Our faculty are also experts in innovative, developmentally-sensitive measurement, novel longitudinal applications, and item banking science. Our faculty include qualitative methodologists who identify what matters most to people affected by illness or disability, quantitative experts who know how to compose and validate measures, clinicians who apply these measures in practice to improve health and healthcare delivery, and health informaticians who develop technologies for clinical and research implementation.

Determinants of Health and Disease

There is a growing recognition of the potent impact of developmental, neuroscientific, stress-related, and contextual factors on the onset and course of health and disease, along with the intersecting influences the brain, physiology, cognition, emotion, and behavior on these patterns. Our faculty apply diverse perspectives and innovative methods to understand mechanisms of health and disease in order to improve health, development, and quality of life across the lifespan. Their research emphasizes malleable factors that may be harnessed for disease prevention and health promotion. Major areas of emphasis among faculty include the developmental origins of risk and resilience, including developmentally-sensitive measurement in the first years of life, the creation of brain-targeted interventions to directly alter cognitive functions such as memory and decision-making, and the examination of stress as an influence on a variety of health outcomes.

Intervention Science

The burden of disease affects every aspect of our society. Reducing this burden—as well as reducing morbidity and early mortality—requires development of evidence-based strategies to prevent and manage health conditions across the disease spectrum and the lifecourse. Innovations in intervention development can help make sure that these interventions are acceptable, relevant to target populations, and effective at changing intended mechanisms and outcomes. Our faculty are making major contributions to these and other areas in the science of health promotion and disease management. Their contributions employ multi-level intervention methods and build creatively on the complex and multidimensional nature of determinants of health and disease. Our faculty members are also experts in innovative uses of communication strategies and technology to engage target populations (e.g., social media, web-based behavioral and psychosocial interventions), methods for personalizing interventions based on individual factors, and application of cultural tailoring to improve quality of life and health outcomes in diverse populations.  

Implementation Science

Innovations in intervention and practice must be distributed to clinical settings and communities if they are to have their intended impact on individual and public health. Our implementation science faculty are a transdisciplinary community of dissemination and implementation scientists with expertise in quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods. Their research addresses the design and conduct of implementation trials, multilevel mediation and mechanistic work, and methods for applying social and behavioral science methods to implementation science (e.g., behavioral economic theory). Their research uses sophisticated methods that reflect a range of methodological perspectives (e.g., implementation strategy design and co-creation, community partnered approaches, equitable implementation, approaches to testing comparative effectiveness of implementation strategies) across the lifespan and across settings (e.g., ambulatory care, acute care, global settings, schools). Faculty members’ emphasis on equitable implementation ensures that health equity is centered in their investigations.