Social Determinants of Health Maps

One of CDC's four overarching Health Protection Goals is "Healthy People in Healthy Places." This goal addresses the idea that the places where people live, work, learn, and play will protect and promote their health and safety, especially those people at greater risk of health disparities.

Social determinants of health are factors in the social environment that contribute to or detract from the health of individuals and communities. These factors include, but are not limited to the following:

• Socioeconomic status
• Transportation
• Housing
• Access to services
• Discrimination by social grouping (e.g., race, gender, or class)
• Social or environmental stressors

Social determinants of health have repeatedly been found to be associated with heart disease and stroke. These factors work either directly to affect the burden of heart disease and stroke and their risk factors, or indirectly, through their influence on health-promoting behaviors. With this in mind, the following maps of selected social determinants of health provide information to be used in tandem with other data sources to match heart disease and stroke prevention programs and policies to the needs of local populations. They also may generate hypotheses regarding the pathways between the social environment and health in general and heart disease and stroke specifically.

Maps

Socioenvironmental

• Poverty
• Unemployment
• White Collar Workers
• High School Education
• College Education
• Urban-Rural Classification

Sociodemographic

• People Aged 65 Years and Older
• American Indian and Alaska Native
• Asian and Pacific Islander
• Black
• White
• Hispanic or Latino

Health Care

• Health Insurance
• Cardiovascular Disease Specialty Physicians
• Neurologists

Other Resources Related to the Social Determinants of Health

CDC's Division of Adult and Community Health Community Health Resources
A searchable database to help plan, implement and evaluate community health interventions and programs to address chronic disease and health disparities issues. Links to hundreds of useful planning guides, evaluation frameworks, communication materials, behavioral and risk factor data, fact sheets, scientific articles, key reports and state and local program contacts are included.

Promoting Health Equity—A Resource to Help Communities Address Social Determinants of Health [PDF–6M]
This workbook is for community-based organizations seeking to affect the social determinants of health through community-based participatory approaches and nontraditional partnerships.

Heart-Healthy and Stroke-Free: A Social Environment Handbook
Strategies for public health professionals and community and state leaders to assess the conditions for heart-healthy and stroke-free living in communities.

Data Set Directory of Social Determinants of Health at the Local Level
This directory contains an extensive list of existing data sets that can be used to address the social determinants of health. The data sets are organized according to 12 dimensions, or broad categories, of the social environment. Each dimension is subdivided into various components.

World Health Organization—Commission on Social Determinants of Health
Closing the Gap in a Generation: Health Equity Through Action on the Social Determinants of Health
The Final Report of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health sets out key areas of daily living conditions and of the underlying structural drivers that influence them in which action is needed. It provides analysis of social determinants of health and concrete examples of types of action that have proven effective in improving health and health equity in countries at all levels of socioeconomic development.