Can connectivity assist community well-being?

Now an assistant professor at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, [Sanjay] Basu has dedicated his career to studying the social determinants of health disparities, health differences that adversely affect disadvantaged populations. He recently received an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award to examine U.S. social assistance programs and their effects on a range of health outcomes over the last 40-plus years. He’ll consider eight federal and state programs—including income, housing, and food assistance programs—that reach more than 1 in 3 Americans.

Basu’s two-fold goal is to discover whether these programs have reduced health disparities and where they can be tweaked to work more effectively. He will address a host of issues, ranging from whether affordable housing programs can help lower-income people with asthma better control the condition to whether welfare programs have an influence on the health of single mothers.