Date of Completion

Spring 5-6-2024

Thesis Advisor(s)

Frederick X. Gibbons

Honors Major

Individualized Major

Disciplines

Health Policy | Health Psychology | Social Psychology

Abstract

In 2010, the World Health Organization developed the Conceptual Framework for the Social Determinants of Health as a response to epidemiologists’ and public health workers’ need to estimate the impact of social inequality. Within this framework, psychosocial factors are intermediary determinants of health that influence an individual’s interactions with their environment. This paper analyzes data and results from ten articles from the Family and Community Health Study (FACHS), which looks at the impacts of psychosocial, contextual, and family effects on health and developmental outcomes in Black American families. The findings across the ten articles provide strong evidence that there are multiple pathways through which psychosocial factors impact substance use disorder vulnerability for Black Americans. In addition, racism was a psychosocial stressor in all nine articles that observed the effects of racial discrimination, showing that intermediary, and not just structural, racism is a mediating factor of substance use for Black Americans. The results of this study can be used to inform better health promoting policies, such as including interventions that center or include psychosocial factors as a means of reducing substance use for Black Americans.

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