Author
Listed:
- Nyna Williams
- Emily Newton-Hoe
- Martha Kovac
Abstract
A critical driver of population health, well-being, and equity is making health a shared value, or the belief that health is a priority for oneself and one’s community. For people in positions of influence, attitudes regarding their organization’s perspective may result in decisions that advance health equity or reinforce inequities. Yet despite the potential role of leaders in influencing health and well-being, little is known about their attitudes regarding their organization’s perspective on what shapes health, or how their attitudes translate into actions that improve population health. The objectives of this study are twofold: (1) to understand leaders’ attitudes with regard to their organization’s perspective on population health and (2) to identify the attitudes associated with leaders’ perspectives regarding their organization’s intention to engage in behaviors that advance population health. We designed a survey instrument grounded in the Theory of Planned Behavior and fielded the survey to 18,367 state and community leaders across all 50 U.S. states, 325 U.S. cities, and nine sectors from fall 2020 until spring 2022. We received surveys from 5,450 leaders, yielding a 32 percent response rate. Survey respondents viewed social determinants of health and health equity as important factors influencing population health. Additionally, two attitudes were most associated with leaders’ intentions to promote population health—“self-efficacy” (a leader’s confidence in taking action to promote health for all) and “behaviors valued by important others” (how much certain groups want the organization to take action that promotes health for all). Efforts to improve population health through leaders should focus on supporting leaders’ self-efficacy and on increasing leaders’ perceptions regarding behaviors valued by important others. Governmental entities and funders can use these data to support leaders’ efforts in improving population health, well-being, and equity.
Suggested Citation
Nyna Williams & Emily Newton-Hoe & Martha Kovac, 2024.
"How attitudes of state and community leaders regarding health equity and social determinants of health are associated with behavioral intentions to improve population health,"
PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 19(4), pages 1-15, April.
Handle:
RePEc:plo:pone00:0301450
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0301450
Download full text from publisher
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0301450. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.