The AHI HPS theoretical framework is based on the fundamental cause theory (1) and the life course framework (2). The fundamental cause theory explains persisting associations between socioeconomic status and diseases/mortality in terms of personal resources such as knowledge, money, power, prestige, and social connections, as well as disparate social contexts related to these resources (3). It places social condition as the fundamental cause of diseases because influences multiple outcomes, affects disease outcomes through multiple factors, involves access to resources to avoid risk, and minimise consequences of diseases. Furthermore, it reproduces over time, because higher socio-economic groups are better equipped to benefit from new knowledge.

The life course framework (2) offers policy makers the ways and means to understand the interaction between nature and nurture. This conceptual model illustrates that an individual’s biological resources are influenced by their genetic endowment, their pre-natal and post-natal development and their social and physical environment in early life, and throughout the life course. 

The understanding of the combined long-term effects of nature and nurture on disease outcomes over the life course provides the foundation for the AHI HPS model school to community intervention. Read more

References:

1.     Phelan JC, Link BG, Tehranifar P. Social conditions as fundamental causes of health inequalities: theory, evidence, and policy implications. J Health Soc Behav. 2010;51 Suppl: S28-40. doi: 10.1177/0022146510383498.

2.     Kuh D, Ben-Shlomo Y. A life course apporach to chronic disease epidemiology. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2004.

3.     Masters, R. K., Link, B. G., & Phelan, J. C. (2015). Trends in education gradients of 'preventable' mortality: a test of fundamental cause theory. Social science & medicine (1982), 127, 19–28. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.10.023

4.     Nicolau B, Marcenes W. How will a life course framework be used to tackle wider social determinants of health? Community Dent Oral Epidemiol. 2012 Oct;40 Suppl 2:33-8. doi: 10.1111/j.1600-0528.2012.00717.x.