Introduction to the Handbook on the Social Determinants of Health

This introduction identifies current themes in the social science literature related to social determinants of health (SDOH). These include global warming and growing economic insecurity for many households, among other crises. The author attributes these multiple intersecting crises, or polycrisis, to neoliberal capitalism. All threaten democratic processes and the health of populations. The polycrisis interacts with social locations such as social class, gender and race, among others. Contributors to the Handbook on the Social Determinants of Health examine these issues and call for economic and political change through public policies to improve the quality and distribution of the SDOH. The aims of the Handbook are fourfold. First, it brings together existing and recent scholarship on the SDOH, including their sources and effects on SDOH, and how these sources shape the quality and distribution of SDOH and come to affect health. Second, it expands the analysis of the effects of the SDOH to the process of social exclusion experienced by racialized populations, especially Indigenous populations, women, and populations with disabilities, among others. Third, it broadens the analysis of SDOH to different geographies beyond Western countries. Finally, the Handbook identifies and explores emerging themes tied to the study of the SDOH to recent scholarship and advocacy for public policies to improve the quality and distribution of the SDOH and hence human health and well-being.