Recently in the American Journal of Public Health, Diana Hernández PhD, and Carolyn B. Swope MPH, assess the current state of research on housing and health disparities, and share recommendations for achieving opportunities for health equity centered on a comprehensive framing of housing.

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.

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.

Source: Am J Public Health. Diana Hernández PhD, and Carolyn B. Swope MPH. Published online ahead of print August 15, 2019: e1–e4. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2019.305210