How Our Environment Gets Under Our Skin

A growing body of research over the past decade has begun to tease out the ways that geography and discrimination affect physiology and health. Neighborhood conditions, access to healthy food, the experience of race and class — such forces can influence everything from average lifespan to chronic disease rates to birth outcomes. At the same time, an emerging field of science is showing how these drivers of health are manifested down to the level of our DNA. The webinar covered key insights from the research, explained its implications for public policy, and explored how this new understanding might change how we report on health.

This webinar is a project of the Center for Health Journalism, in collaboration with The Commonwealth Fund.