Leveraging Social and Structural Determinants of Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: A Systems-Level Opportunity to Improve Public Health

Abstract

Building sustainable SDOH infrastructures in public health institutions that reach across multiple health topics and non-health organizations could increase chances of meeting public health morbidity and mortality reduction goals, including decreasing health disparities. Although public health priorities and socioeconomic trends will change over time, experience suggests that social and structural factors will continue to influence the public's health. The CDC and state, tribal, local, and territorial public health institutions have played important leadership roles in the system of community and service organizations that interface with communities they mutually serve to address SDOH. Continued capacity-building could help grow and sustain an SDOH infrastructure that advances this work.