Fundamental Cause Theory at 30: Rethinking Health Inequities

Session Submission Type: Paper Session (90 minute)

Description

In their groundbreaking review for Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Link and Phelan (1995) drew attention to the fundamental durability of associations between socioeconomic status and health across time and space. They highlighted numerous and contextualized ways in which these associations have evolved across mechanisms, behaviors, and/or diseases. Ever since, medical sociologists have been hard at work applying, testing, and refining fundamental cause theory (FCT), leading Clouston and Link to conclude about twenty-five years later in their Annual Review retrospective that our knowledge about how technologies, institutions, and policies have shaped socioeconomic health disparities has vastly improved. Yet, as they state, much still remains to be uncovered — and perhaps especially with regard to collective or countervailing mechanisms as well as the more “hidden” roles of diversions, power or relational structures, or intersectional agency relevant to FCT. This session will showcase ongoing, leading-edge research that involves FCT in its theorization and empirical analysis. Possible foci of covered studies will include, but are not limited to, disease-linked mortality, diffusion and/or uptake of interventions or preventative or treatment technologies, collective agency, competitive valuations, institutional or contextual variations in the effects of SES, and/or intersections among SES, racism, and stigma across the life course.

Sub Unit

• Medical Sociology Section / Fundamental Cause Theory at 30: Rethinking Health Inequities

Presider

• Nicholas Smith, University of Maryland-College Park

Individual Presentations

• Structural Classism and Health in the United States - Emily Dore, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health; Patricia Homan, Florida State University; Megan M. Reynolds, University of Utah

• Fundamental Cause Theory and Immigrant Mortality During the First Year of the Covid-19 Pandemic - Elyas Bakhtiari, College of William and Mary

• Where are the Qualitative Methods in FCT? Leveraging End-of-life Data to Explore Future Agendas - Karen Lutfey Spencer, University of Colorado-Denver

• Metabolic Waiting Game: GLP-1 Access and the Inequality Paradox - Kuniko Chijiwa, Riverside University Health System; Anthony Firek, Riverside University Health System

• Scientific Knowledge as Resource and Risk: Hormone Replacement Therapy as a Test of Fundamental Cause Theory - Vibeke Tornhoej Christensen, VIVE; Andrea N. Polonijo, University of California-Merced; Brian Christopher Kelly, Indiana University-Bloomington; Richard M. Carpiano, University of California-Riverside

Discussant

• Bruce G Link, University of California-Riverside

Session Organizers

• Matthew Andersson, Baylor University

• Nicholas Smith, University of Maryland-College Park