Housing as a Platform for Health and Equity: Evidence and Future Directions
Open accessAbstract
The links between housing and health are now known to be strong and multifaceted and to generally span across 4 key pillars: stability, affordability, quality and safety, and neighborhood opportunity. Housing disparities in the United States are tenaciously patterned along axes of social inequality and contribute to the burden related to persistently adverse health outcomes in affected groups. Appreciating the multidimensional relationship between housing and health is critical in moving the housing and health agenda forward to inspire greater equity. We assessed the current state of research on housing and health disparities, and we share recommendations for achieving opportunities for health equity centered on a comprehensive framing of housing. Despite the vastness of existing research, we must contextualize the housing and health disparities nexus in a broader web of interrelated variables emerging from the same roots of structural inequalities. There is more we can do to maximize the extent to which existing research furthers our understanding of housing’s relationship to health and potential related interventions; however, there are also several areas where new research is warranted.
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Growing international evidence indicates that disparities in housing are patterned along with other social, demographic, economic, and environmental factors that contribute to the cumulative burden of persistent poor health outcomes in affected groups.
“Growing international evidence indicates that disparities in housing are patterned along with other social, demographic, economic, and environmental factors that contribute to the cumulative burden of persistent poor health outcomes in affected groups (3, 4, 57, 76).”
From Review of the Impact of Housing Quality on Inequalities in Health and Well-Being (2023) · cites this paper as [57]
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- Authors
- Hernández, D., & Swope, C. B.
- Affiliations
- Columbia University (US)
- Venue
- American Journal of Public Health
- Publisher
- American Public Health Association
- Published
- 2019-10
- Volume
- 109
- Issue
- 10
- Pages
- 1363-1366
- ISSN
- 0090-0036 (ISSN-L)
- 1541-0048
- PMC
- PMC6727307
- OpenAlex
- W2967548594
- Cited by
- 66
- References
- 17
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 16 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 1
- FWCI
- 7.07
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- American Journal of Public Health (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (P30ES009089)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Health › Health disparities and outcomes
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Homelessness and Social Issues
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies
- Keywords
- housing and health, health equity, housing inequality, housing affordability, housing stability, neighborhood opportunity, structural inequality, social determinants of health, health interventions
- MeSH terms
- Health Equity, Housing, Humans, Public Housing, Residence Characteristics, Socioeconomic Factors, United States, Health Status Disparities
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