1. Write a brief paragraph discussing what social determinants are most relevant to your area of research and why. Consider both structural stratifiers (e.g. income, education, etc) and intermediary determinants such as material and psychosocial circumstances, as described in the WHO reading. Explain why you chose the factors (might use Braveman article from last week to provide justification. The association could be reported in published research or it could be your hypothesized relationship. Consider whether how these factors might function over the lifecourse and/or intergenerationally.
My area current area of research is in family planning and support of self-managed abortion, specifically investigating emergency provider knowledge and attitudes around abortion and self-managed abortion. People have self-managed abortions for many reasons, however a growing number of people who live in regions where abortion is restricted are self-managing their abortion because they do not have other options. Although data describing those who are self-managing their abortion is poor, we can hypothesize that a significant social determinant is SES. Those with higher SES may have easier access to travel and are able to obtain abortions in less restricted areas. Significant structural stratifiers include the political context of peoples lives including social policies and their respective state and local societal values. Other structural determinants include education, occupation, income, and racism which all impact a person’s shifting socioeconomic status throughout their lifetime. Intermediary determinants include people’s material circumstances which are impacted by their socioeconomic position.
2. Write a brief paragraph describing the extent to which an socioecological framework incorporating issues related to social determinants has been applied to your area of research. Are there opportunities for improving our understanding of or approach to disparities in your area with a greater emphasis on a socioecological framework?
The socio-ecological health framework is based on human experiences being shaped by a number of contexts. Incorporating this framework or social determinants of health into the field of research is sparse because there is so little data regarding people who are self-managing their abortions outside of the medical realm. Overall the field of family planning has shown an encouraging shift in focus in many areas of research by using the lens of reproductive justice. Reproductive justice considers that it is a human right to, “maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities”1. Incorporating the reproductive framework into our research enables us to address power systems and center the most marginalized in our work. The field of family planning is also including more community-based participatory research, where community members have equitable roles with researchers in designing and interpreting studies. This emphasizes the community’s better understanding and appreciation of their own socioecological framework and the importance of their incorporation into research. Groups like IBIS have developed internal rubrics for research projects in order to incorporate community partners in a plan that values mutual respect, accountability, impact in power2.
1. Reproductive Justice. SisterSong. 2019. https://www.sistersong.net/reproductive-justice
2. Jayaweera, Ruvani, A Human Rights and Reproductive JusticeLensfor Research: Our Statement of Principles. IBIS Draft. 2019.