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Through the Kaleidoscope Viewing the Contributions of the Behavioral and Social Sciences to Health -- The Barbara and Jerome Grossman Symposium (2002) / Chapter Skim
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Investments in Research and Interventions at the Community Level
Pages 42-45

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From page 42...
... Taking coronary heart disease as an example, he said, "we have done a good job of identifying several important risk factors for this disease. We all know the list: serum cholesterol, other blood lipids, blood pressure, cigarette smoking, diabetes, physical activity, and so on.
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From page 43...
... "Many of the social risk factors we have identified are related not just to one or two clinical diseases but to a long list." We need to study the ways in which these risk factors interact in "compromising the body's defense systems rather than in causing specific diseases. We have been trained to study one clinical disease at a time from one disciplinary perspective, and this may be the reason why our search for risk factors to explain disease occurrence may be less than 100 percent successful." Unfortunately, he said, "the precise measurement of psychosocial factors is very difficult because the diseases we study are the end result of a very complex series of biological processes.
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From page 44...
... Similarly, workplace interventions should consider not only the individual attributes of workers but social supports, family and neighborhood influences, environmental and social practices, and so on." Essential to such interventions and in fact the "common denominator in our successful efforts, Dr. Syme said, "is that they are multidisciplinary and multilevel in approach." He offered the analogy of designing an airplane, a project that necessarily involves people from hundreds of different disciplines who do not have the option of refusing to interact with one
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From page 45...
... in Canada, called the National Institutes of Health Research, not only "contains institutes on heart disease and cancer and arthritis but has also established new institutes that cross disease lines, such as the Institute of Population Health, Institute on Gender, and Institute of Aboriginal Health.... And the funding for these institutes is, importantly, determined by the degree to which each institute collaborates with the other institutes." In a similar spirit, "the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is currently soliciting proposals from universities to train a generation of population health scholars," Dr.
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Key Terms

  • psychosocial factors
  • prevention programs
  • heart disease
  • people change
  • disease risk

  • population health
  • coronary heart
  • phenomenal success
  • factors interact
  • clinical disease

  • define psychosocial
  • programs directed
  • appropriate medical
  • physical activity
  • intervention directed

  • community health
  • disease lines
  • taking coronary
  • including peer
  • neighborhood influences

  • individuals function
  • macarthur foundation
  • environment disease
  • intermediate disease
  • clinical model

  • particular types
  • differences shape
  • margaret chesney
  • offer financial
  • help define


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