Next steps in the development of the social determinants of health approach: the need for a new narrative

Abstract

During the past 15–20 years the Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) framework has become the main approach to understand health inequalities. With this model a range of factors important for health and inequalities in health over the life-course have been connected into a larger framework. Despite its usefulness and popularity within the field, and wide use in influential reviews, the SDoH framework has not been easy to communicate to stakeholders in other sectors, and we cannot as yet see much of substantial societal change as a result of it. In this Commentary I try to discuss possible reasons behind our difficulties to communicate the SDoH perspective. Some of these reasons relate to how we frame and present the different parts of the framework, others are more linked to common beliefs and practices that I think we should rethink. In both cases, I believe that we would benefit from a more general discussion around these fundamental issues, both in order to communicate our important insights but also to better understand our own key study objective, namely how health inequalities are generated, sustained and potentially reduced.