Department of Public Health Sciences, University of California, Davis, Davis, United States; Center for Animal Disease Modeling and Surveillance (CADMS), Department of Veterinary Medicine, University of California, Davis, Davis, United States
Mariana C Stern
Departments of Preventive Medicine and Urology, Keck School of Medicine of USC, Los Angeles, United States; Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, United States
Department of Public Health Sciences, University of California, Davis, Davis, United States; Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of California, Davis, Davis, United States
The National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) has developed a framework to guide and orient research into health disparities and minority health. The framework depicts different domains of influence (such as biological and behavioral) and different levels of influence (such as individual and interpersonal). Here, influenced by the “One Health” approach, we propose adding two new levels of influence – interspecies and planetary – to this framework to reflect the interconnected nature of human, animal, and environmental health. Extending the framework in this way will help researchers to create new avenues of inquiry and encourage multidisciplinary collaborations. We then use the One Health approach to discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated health disparities, and show how the expanded framework can be applied to research into health disparities related to antimicrobial resistance and obesity.
