Annual ISE Conference
The Social Determinants of Mental Health: From Awareness to Action

June 3-4, 2010
The Drake Hotel, Chicago
Download the flyer (PDF)

Featuring:

Keynote Speaker: David Satcher, MD, PhD –The 16th Surgeon General of the United States, past member of the World Health Organization Commission on the Social Determinants of Health, and former Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Currently, Dr. Satcher is the Director of the Satcher Health Leadership Center at the Morehouse School of Medicine.

Plenary Speaker: Sandro Galea, MD, MPH, DrPH – Professor of Epidemiology at the School of Public Health, Research Professor at the Institute of Social Research at the University of Michigan.

This conference will convene innovative thinkers from diverse disciplinary and professional backgrounds to address the Social Determinants of Mental Health (SDOMH).

Today, there is a growing understanding that the social conditions in which "… we are born, grow, live, work and age…" (WHO 2007) profoundly impact health and well-being. Increasingly, that knowledge is being used to inform discourse on the prevention and treatment of such physical illnesses as cardiovascular and respiratory disease, cancer, obesity, diabetes, and HIV/AIDS. It is also being used to shape policy and programmatic responses to these illnesses. However, the social determinants frame has not been as widely or explicitly used to shape mental health debate, policy, and programming.

The purpose of the Conference is to:

• Increase awareness about how social conditions such as housing quality, land use, food security, employment opportunity, working conditions, the environment, public safety, and public service systems impact mental health and well-being;
• Encourage the development of mental health prevention and intervention strategies that are informed by the social determinants framework;
• Facilitate and support the establishment of multidisciplinary collaborations that can identify and address the social conditions that impact mental health; and
• Disseminate new knowledge and practice innovations.

Papers were invited that create new knowledge and/or practice innovations by doing one or more of the following:

• applying the social determinants frame to mental health; 
• bridging disciplinary and professional perspectives on the social determinants of mental health; 
• illustrating the mechanisms and pathways by which social context impacts mental health; 
• illustrating the relationships between "macro" (e.g., national and international economic, climatic, political, demographic, and social forces), "meso" (e.g., family, neighborhood, and community characteristics) and "micro" (e.g., individual attributes) variables and mental health; and
• proposing new or describing existing policy and programmatic mental health interventions that are based on the social determinants frame.

Topics to include the impact on mental health of:

• national and international forces (e.g., globalization, urbanization, industrialization, privatization, climate change, migration); 
• legislation and public policy (e. g., labor, immigration, environmental, housing, trade, land use, fiscal, monetary, education, social welfare, criminal justice); 
• institutional behaviors (e.g., the media, private corporations, government agencies);
• social, political, and economic ideologies (e.g., liberalism vs. conservatism; private markets vs. government intervention; personal vs. social responsibility; individualism vs. communitarianism); 
• macro-social phenomena (e.g., natalism, racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism, and ablism; as well as stratification, cohesion, and exclusion)

The period for submitting papers is now closed. The deadline for submissions was December 31, 2009.

Papers were invited from mental health professionals, given the multidimensionality of the social determinants, submissions were also invited from professionals in other fields such as law, public safety, architecture, planning, housing, transportation, environmental sciences, social work, and human rights; and other disciplines such as economics, sociology, political science, demography, criminology, and anthropology. We sought submissions from authors representing the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors, as well as those representing local, national, and international bodies. Papers submitted by cross-disciplinary, cross-professional, cross-sectoral teams of authors were especially welcomed.

Submission Requirements

The period for submitting papers is now closed. The working language of the conference is English. Submissions of 300 word abstracts were due by December 31st, 2009. In the abstracts, we asked submitters to be certain to:

(1) Describe how the submission is relevant to the conference theme;

(2) Describe how the submission builds new knowledge and/or practice innovations by doing at least one of the following: 

• applies the social determinants frame to mental health; 
• bridges disciplinary, professional, and sectoral perspectives on the social determinants of mental health; 
• illustrates the mechanisms and the pathways by which the social context impacts mental health and well-being; 
• illustrates the relationships between "macro" (e.g., national and international economic, climatic, political, demographic, and social forces), "meso" (e.g., family, neighborhood, and community characteristics) and "micro" (e.g., individual attributes) variables and mental health; and/or
• proposes new or describes existing policy and programmatic mental health interventions that are based the on social determinants frame.

(3) Note the contact information and professional/disciplinary background of the author(s). 

Accepted abstracts will be published in the Conference proceedings. For more information, please contact ise@adler.edu.