Talk highlights social medicine

An NIH official also noted the importance of money to fund research projects. Lecturing before faculty members from many of the University's schools, Norman Anderson, director of the Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research at the National Institutes of Health, spoke yesterday about the influence of environmental, social and behavioral factors on individual health. The lecture, sponsored by more than fifteen of the University's schools and organizations, illustrated the growing need for research and study across scholarly disciplines. As the causes of illness have grown to include environment, behavior and socio-economic status, non-traditional medical studies have begun to find recognition in the medical community, according to Anderson. The study of environmental and behavioral factors developed from the failure of traditional medical examinations to explain high rates of abnormal blood pressure among African-American males. Studies have shown that 50 percent of deaths each year are directly caused by behavioral problems such as smoking, unsafe sex, alcohol or hostility. Environmental and social factors such as race, quality of residence, education and socio-economic class profoundly affect an individual's behavior and eventually that person's "health outcome," or individual well-being, according to Anderson. For example, racial segregation caused by the migration of whites and middle class blacks to the suburbs has left areas of extreme poverty where adverse health outcomes have been much more frequent. "The inhabitants of these areas, mostly poor blacks, live with a much greater susceptibility to illness, mortality and factors resulting in adverse effects upon an individual's behavioral, psychological and biological functioning," Anderson said. Tests done to show the effects of living in a poverty-stricken environment determined that inhabitants of these areas showed a weakened ability to perform natural biological tasks in the heart and kidney. Inhabitants of these areas also exhibited a much greater behavioral tendency toward depression and psychological distress. Anderson said stressing the integration of research between disciplines will allow doctors to prescribe treatments at different levels and rethink their approach to health science research. "We are trying to encourage scientists from different disciplines to learn each other's methods at an early stage in their career," Anderson said. To better understand the many influences acting on individual health in urban areas, the Penn Center for Urban Health Research, a co-sponsor of the event, has worked to integrate members of the community with researchers, clinicians and service providers from several disciplines. "This meeting tonight -- involving representatives from the many schools in the University -- marks a beginning of interdisciplinary research that I hope will lead to better understanding of the full range of factors influencing health and illness," said Loretta Jemmott, director for the Center for Urban Health Research said. Despite progress in the medical field, scientists still do not fully understand the complex nature of the relationship between environmental, social and behavioral factors on health or the causes of illness, Anderson said. "I believe the next great frontier in health science is the integration of research across disciplines and levels of analysis," he added.