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Date:
September 27, 2002 (Friday)
Time: 12:00 noon - 2:00 pm
Venue: Seminar 6, LG1, Laboratory Block, Faculty of Medicine Building
Social
capital refers to the resources available within social structures
- such as trust, norms of reciprocity, and mutual aid - that individuals
can draw on to achieve collective action. Social capital has been
linked to economic development, the smooth functioning of democracies,
and the prevention of crime, among other benefits. Recently, the
notion of social capital has begun to be extended to the public
health field to explain variations in the health achievement of
societies. This presentation will review a number of empirical demonstrations
of the relationship between social capital and health outcomes,
drawing on recent U.S. data. Ecological analyses indicate associations
between indicators of social capital and health outcomes. For example,
state-level health indicators of social capital (such as aggregated
trust) have been found to explain a significant portion of the cross-sectional
variations in mortality rates across states of the U.S. (r = 0.79,
p < .001). These findings have been replicated at the level of
neighborhoods. Further work is required in refining the measurement
of social capital, as well as in explaining the mechanisms of its
association with health outcomes.
Ichiro
Kawachi is Associate Professor of Health and Social Behavior, and
the Director of the Harvard Center for Society and Health, both
at the Harvard School of Public Health. Kawachi received his M.D.
degree (with Distinction) in 1985, and a Ph.D. in epidemiology in
1991, both from the University of Otago, New Zealand.
Kawachi's
research has focused on uncovering the social and economic determinants
of population health. He is the co-editor (with Lisa Berkman) of
the first textbook on Social Epidemiology, published by Oxford
University Press in 2000, as well as a Reader on Income Inequality
and Health, with Bruce Kennedy and Richard Wilkinson (The New
Press, 1999). An edited volume on Neighborhoods and Health is forthcoming
(Oxford University Press, 2002).
Kawachi
is the past recipient of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator
Award in Health Policy Research (1996), and the co-director of training
at Harvard of the soon-to-be-launched RWJ Program in Health and
Society Scholars. Kawachi has taught internationally, in Australia,
Mexico, Chile, Taiwan, and New Zealand. He is a member of the Research
Advisory Committee of the Pan-American Health Organization/WHO.
He joined the MacArthur Foundation's Network on Socioeconomic Status
and Health in 1998, where he has sought to investigate the macro-level
determinants of health (income distribution, social cohesion, neighborhood
environments), as well as psychosocial predictors of cardiovascular
disease (job stress, social networks and support, and psychological
factors).
Kawachi
is currently Senior Editor (Social Epidemiology) of the journal
Social Science & Medicine, as well as Editor pro tem of the
American Journal of Epidemiology.
Press release - Chinese 
Press release - English
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