The Community Guide's model for linking the social environment to health.

In the mid-1990s, the independent national Task Force on Community Preventive Services (the Task Force) was created under the auspices of the Department of Health and Human Services to summarize what is known about the effectiveness of community-based interventions to improve population health outcomes. The Task Force wanted to examine broad social determinants of health from an ecologic perspective—one that recognized the connection between health and sustainable human, cultural, economic, and social activities. Communities interact with resources in the social and physical environments over broad periods of time. Understanding patterns of health or disease requires a focus not only on personal behaviors and biologic traits but also on characteristics of the social and physical environments that shape human experience and offer or limit opportunities for health. Social Determinants of Health