Socioeconomic and Geographic Disparities in Health and Healthcare Utilization

Dear Colleagues,

The social determinants of health (SDoH), defined by the World Health Organization as nonmedical conditions in which “people are born, grow, work, live, and age,” impact one’s quality of life via access to healthcare, health education, and awareness. Among the five major domains of SDoH, economic stability and neighborhood and built environment are key contributors to the disparities in health, healthcare access, and quality. Individuals of a lower socioeconomic status face multiple barriers to maintaining good health and accessing quality care and often become dependent on unhealthy coping mechanisms to deal with stress. Identifying these disparities at the individual and aggregate levels will provide pathways to targeted place-based interventions and recommendations for policy change on a broader scale.

This Special Issue invites manuscripts that consider mobility and transportation, location of facilities, urban and rural healthcare disparities, uninsured rates, unemployment rates, high school and college education, and policies across states and countries as potential barriers to accessing quality care and maintaining good health. From data analytic perspectives, manuscripts on hotspot and cluster analysis, spatiotemporal methods, Bayesian analysis, multilevel modeling, disease mapping, and epidemiologic methods will be considered. Case studies on disparities in infectious diseases, chronic noncommunicable diseases (diabetes, hypertension), and access to nutrition will also be considered.

Dr. Rajib Paul
Prof. Dr. Jean-Claude Thill
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.