Reenvisioning the Social Determinants of Health to Reimagine Population Health Interventions

Rethinking how we reenvision the social determinants of health (SDOH) to reimagine population health interventions can facilitate our understanding of how to move diverse populations along an ever-shifting health continuum toward a nonzero-sum healthier society, regardless of its populations’ starting points. The SDOH encompass not only socioeconomic factors but also modifiable lifestyle health behaviors, which are strongly aligned with chronic disease prevention. Through a community consortium, serving as a catalyst for social action and change, a population’s structural and SDOH can be reenvisioned to promote health equity. We discuss the Nutrition and Fitness for Life (NuFIT) project, a community-engaged Afrocentric cancer prevention intervention that promoted a physically active lifestyle and healthful nutrition, created and optimized community conditions for the population to engage in healthful behaviors by leveraging the resources of public and private partnerships, enhanced population- and community-level resilience, and demonstrated sustainability by the community. Public health nurses, partnering with community members who are local experts, can lead and advocate for legislative action and social policy agendas to reenvision the SDOH, demonstrating that we specialize in more than documenting problems; we also find and reimagine solutions for improving the health of populations and communities that have global health implications.