Yoshida Kyoko, Pienaar Elsje, Bynum Shalanda A, Chesler Naomi, Colebank Mitchel J, Heneghan Jessie, Tyus Nadra, Miller-Kleinhenz Jasmine, Lee Bruce Y
Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States of America.
Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, United States of America.
PLoS Comput Biol. 2025 Jul 15;21(7):e1013284. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1013284. eCollection 2025 Jul.
Social determinants of health (SDOH) are the conditions in which people live, work, and play, and the wider set of factors (e.g., social and economic systems and policies) that shape a person's daily life. SDOH can differ significantly across communities and populations, having positive impacts for some and negative impacts for others. Ultimately, this results in differences in health and disease distribution, that are known as health disparities. Despite the known impacts of SDOH and calls to characterize, address, reduce, and eliminate health disparities, they persist and, in some cases, have worsened. To address this challenge, a session at the Interagency Modeling and Analysis Group Multiscale Modeling Meeting held on the National Institutes of Health campus from June 28th to 29th, 2023, considered potential ways that multiscale modeling can help characterize adverse SDOH and resulting health disparities. This perspective summarizes and synthesizes the session discussions as a call to action to promote and strengthen interdisciplinary science that merges the unique perspectives, experiences, and expertise of the SDOH and multiscale modeling scientific communities in the pursuit of knowledge to improve population health. Specifically, we identify current challenges and ways in which multiscale modeling is uniquely suited to address the challenges, as well as identify what is necessary to facilitate the successful application of multiscale modeling in SDOH research. We conclude with a discussion on the future of multiscale modeling in SDOH and health disparities research.
健康的社会决定因素（SDOH）是人们生活、工作和娱乐的环境，以及塑造个人日常生活的更广泛因素（如社会和经济系统及政策）。SDOH在不同社区和人群中可能存在显著差异，对一些人有积极影响，对另一些人则有负面影响。最终，这导致了健康和疾病分布的差异，即所谓的健康差距。尽管已知SDOH的影响，并呼吁对健康差距进行描述、应对、减少和消除，但这些差距仍然存在，在某些情况下甚至有所恶化。为应对这一挑战，2023年6月28日至29日在国立卫生研究院校园举行的跨部门建模与分析小组多尺度建模会议上的一次会议，探讨了多尺度建模有助于描述不良SDOH及其导致的健康差距的潜在方式。本观点总结并综合了会议讨论内容，呼吁采取行动，促进和加强跨学科科学，融合SDOH和多尺度建模科学界的独特观点、经验和专业知识，以追求改善人群健康的知识。具体而言，我们确定了当前的挑战以及多尺度建模特别适合应对这些挑战的方式，还确定了促进多尺度建模在SDOH研究中成功应用所需的条件。我们最后讨论了多尺度建模在SDOH和健康差距研究中的未来。
