social determinants of health

Researchers Launch Data Repository for Global Social Determinants of Health

The new Data for Global Health Equity website provides more than 70 datasets on social determinants of health in multiple countries, aiming to make this data more accessible to researchers and policymakers and inform policies and programs that can reduce health inequities.

Researchers and policymakers seeking global data on food access, education, employment, and other social determinants of health (SDoH) that play a vital role in overall well-being can now access this information in one valuable resource. 

With funding from The Rockefeller Foundation, researchers at the School of Public Health have launched a global data repository that combines more than 70 national and international datasets on SDoH into one interactive, user-friendly platform. 

The Data for Global Health Equity website aims to help health experts, government officials, and other key decision-makers understand the social and economic factors that influence health in different countries, and inform evidence-based policies and programs that can reduce global health inequities and improve health outcomes. 

The initiative builds on the work of The Rockefeller Foundation-BU Commission on Health Determinants, Data, and Decision-making (3-D Commission), which released a groundbreaking report in 2021 presenting recommendations on how to measure social determinants more effectively and foster better decision-making around health.

The idea for this data repository was born as the 3-D Commission team realized that many datasets are siloed and inaccessible to researchers—particularly researchers in low- and middle-income countries—due to limited costs, bandwidth, or resources. The new online platform will not only make this information more readily available to wider audiences, it will shed light on where gaps in SDoH knowledge and data collection still exist, and the health resources that are needed the most in specific countries, from the local to international level. 

It is a culmination of months of research scouring databases around the world, including publicly available work, datasets from colleagues and other researchers, and official government reports. The datasets include information on 12 SDoH, including social position and networks, income, wealth, food security, education, occupation, social cohesion, neighborhoods characteristics, religious/tribal/caste affiliation, political position, and governance impact.

“By launching this repository, our aim is to move beyond talking about social determinants of health in an abstract form, to advocate for the use of actionable health data to develop analyses and inform health policies relevant to specific settings in different countries,” says principal investigator Salma Abdalla, assistant professor of global health, who is leading this project along with co-principal investigator Sandro Galea, dean and Robert A. Knox Professor. “For example, certain social determinants of health may operate differently in a local community in India than in a metro city in the US or Europe—so researchers in India will be able to easily access datasets that are relevant to their specific communities and identify areas that require local data collection, rather than develop policies and programs based on data from high-income countries.”

The repository is among the first of its kind to offer such a large number of global SDoH datasets, and all of the data focuses on SDoH at the individual level, rather than population level, to enable policymakers to develop policies and programs that match the needs of different communities. 

“In the past, global health has fixated on fighting disease, but we know there is much more to a healthy life than simply escaping sickness,” says Naveen Rao, senior vice president of health at The Rockefeller Foundation. “This data repository centralizes critical information about other factors that shape our health—including stable housing, nutritious food, and safe environments—giving us a fuller picture of health for communities across the globe.”

The team will continue to update the repository as they identify additional individual-level datasets from other sources, such as electronic medical records, social media platforms, as well as original data collection from the team, and they plan to make it available in multiple languages. Researchers are also welcome to share their own individual-level datasets.

“The current platform is a starting point, as there are many other datasets to incorporate, and we look forward to expanding the repository as we hear from our colleagues across the globe,” Abdalla says. “We hope this repository makes it easier for researchers or anyone interested in health data to find the information they need about social determinants of health in their own country or in other countries, all in one place.” 

Click here to learn more about this work.