Skip to main content
. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2022 Mar 1.
Published in final edited form as: Soc Sci Med. 2021 Feb 3;273:113738. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113738

Table 2.

Social determinants and health outcomes examined in epigenetic studies on DNA methylation

Social Determinant of HealthA Operationalization of the SDOHB
Individual-level stratifiers (k=28):
 Childhood SES only (5) Family income or poverty status (4); TANF (3); financial strain (3); parental education (3); parental occupation (2); parental unemployment (2); single parent household (1).
 Adulthood SES only (6) Family income (3); financial strain (2); education (3); occupation (1); housing tenure (1); and area-level deprivation (3).
 SES across the lifecourse (11) Childhood: occupation (5); parental education (3); family income (1); single-parent household (1).
Adulthood: education (6), occupation (4), family income (4); wealth (1); employment status (1); financial strain (1).
Trajectories: occup.-->occup. (3), educ./assets-->educ. (2).
 Sociodemographics as stratification proxy (7) Race/ethnicity (5); sex/gender (5); geography (1).
Traumas (k=26):
 Unspecified (2) As assessed in PTSD screening (2).
 Genocide (2) Holocaust survivor or offspring of survivor (1); Rwanda genocide survivor (1).
 Discrimination (3) Perceived racism (2); perceived discrimination (2);
Moderator: social support (1).
 Early life adversity: ACEs/SES (19) Physical, sexual, emotional abuse, or maltreatment (15); parental illness (6); parental separation (4); and included childhood SES in measure of adversity (5).
Moderators: parenting repetoire (3); social support (1).
Workplace exposures (k=6):
 Physical environment/toxicants (3) PAHs in brickmaking (1); carbon nanotubes in engineering (1);
mercury in dentistry (1).
 Social environment (3) Shiftwork (2); job strain (1).
Neighborhood exposures (k=15):
 Physical toxicants (n=6) Air pollution (3); microbial environment (1); proximity to heavy metal mining (1) or PCB manufacturing (1).
 Social and economic environment (9) Neighborhood deprivation (5); community crime (2) or violence (1); worse social environment [aesthetics, safety, and cohesion] (1).
A.

the number of papers that included that SDOH domain as a primary focus in the epigenetic analysis.

B.

the number of times the SDOH was captured via that particular measure.