How multi-scale modeling can help examine social determinants of health and resulting disparities

Social determinants of health (SDOH) are the conditions in which people live, work, and play, and the wider set of factors (e.g., social and economic systems and policies) that shape a person’s daily life. SDOH can differ significantly across communities and populations, having positive impacts for some and negative impacts for others. Ultimately, this results in differences in health and disease distribution, that are known as health disparities. Despite the known impacts of SDOH and calls to characterize, address, reduce, and eliminate health disparities, they persist and, in some cases, have worsened. To address this challenge, a session at the Interagency Modeling and Analysis Group Multiscale Modeling Meeting held on the National Institutes of Health campus from June 28th to 29th, 2023, considered potential ways that multiscale modeling can help characterize adverse SDOH and resulting health disparities. This perspective summarizes and synthesizes the session discussions as a call to action to promote and strengthen interdisciplinary science that merges the unique perspectives, experiences, and expertise of the SDOH and multiscale modeling scientific communities in the pursuit of knowledge to improve population health. Specifically, we identify current challenges and ways in which multiscale modeling is uniquely suited to address the challenges, as well as identify what is necessary to facilitate the successful application of multiscale modeling in SDOH research. We conclude with a discussion on the future of multiscale modeling in SDOH and health disparities research.