This working paper makes the case for a new, overarching framework—social inclusion—to advance and integrate social policy. It critiques the current poverty framework and the official U.S. poverty measure, and explains why the concept of social inclusion is a better alternative. The paper discusses how the concept of social inclusion is used in the United Kingdom and how it might be adapted for use in the United States.

A seminal article linking stress and high demand / low control work to heart disease and other health problems.

The purpose of this site is to bring together, for public dissemination, information about and related to Job Strain (specifically) and Work Stress (in general).

Jobs with Justice engages workers and allies in campaigns to win justice in workplaces and in communities where working families live. JwJ was founded in 1987 with the vision of lifting up workers’ rights struggles as part of a larger campaign for economic and social justice. We believe in long-term multi-issue coalition building , grassroots base-building and organizing and strategic militant action as the foundation for building a grassroots movement, and we believe that by engaging a broad community of allies, we can win bigger victories. We reach working people through the organizations that represent them—unions, congregations, community organizations—and directly as JwJ activists. Nearly 100,000 people have signed the Jobs with Justice pledge to "Be There at least five times a year for someone else’s struggle as well as their own."

Since 1992, the Labor Project for Working Families has been partnering with unions, union members, community based organizations and other activists to promote better work and family policies and programs, including paid family leave, child care, elder care and flexible work schedules. Their efforst include: educating unions about work/family initiatives; advocating public policies for working families; and promoting innovation and partnership between unions and communities.

An excellent four-page primer on the Swedish model of social protections, prepared by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. There have been changes to the Swedish welfare state over the past two decades and, in some areas, inequality has increased. However, other social policy areas have expanded and other forms of inequality continue to steadily decline. Like the other Nordic lands, Sweden has been considerably more resistant to the ‘imperatives’ of global integration, and the article considers what we could all learn from their experiences.

A great collection of resources on the issues surrounding SDOH, health equity, and the politics of creating real change in the social factors that most affect health outcomes.

See especially Raphael's "Public policies and the problematic USA population health profile," and "The Politics of Population Health: Why the Welfare State is the Key Social Determinant of Health."

How financial strain and loss of personal control lead to depression, impaired functioning, and poor health. The first author, Rick Price, is featured in Not Just a Paycheck.

The inspiring story of women workers in Tijuana who, though laboring for poverty wages, still stand up to transnational corporations to win severance pay and to clean up toxic waste sites.

This film is part of California Newsreel's Health and Social Justice Collection.

University of Washington professor and emergency room doctor Bezruchka considers how social and economic factors contribute to astronomical rates of mental illness in the U.S., particularly among children.

Based out of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, the MPRC is dedicated to a program of prevention research on the problems of employment, economic stress, and well-being throughout the life course. MPRC seeks to extend scientific understanding of the links between conditions of employment and mental and physical health, while at the same time, expanding the policy and practice options available to both the public and private sector.

An online, grassroots movement working for mandatory paid maternity and paternity leave, open flexible work, healthcare for all kids, excellent childcare, realistic and fair wages, and healthy afterschool options for all children.

One potential underlying explanation for socioeconomic status (SES) gradients in health is exposure to multiple risk factors. Income and class tend to sort
individuals into different settings that are often accompanied by systematic differences in environmental quality. Housing and neighborhood quality, pollutants and toxins, crowding and congestion, and noise exposure all vary with SES. Persons lower in SES also experience more adverse interpersonal relationships with family members, friends, supervisors, and communitymembers. Furthermore, exposure to thesemultiple risk factors is associated with worse health outcomes. Thus, the convergence of exposure tomultiple physical and psychosocial risk factors accompanying disadvantage may account for a portion of SES gradients in health in both childhood and adulthood.

In this original interview conducted for UNNATURAL CAUSES, Professor Nancy Krieger of the Harvard School of Public Health discusses the social gradient, the political economy of health, and the role of public health in struggles for social justice.

Paid sick leave gives workers an opportunity to regain their health, return to full productivity at work, and avoid spreading disease to their co-workers, all of which reduces employers’ overall absence expense. When used to care for sick children or dependent relatives, it helps recovery times and reduces job turnover of working parents.  However, new analysis of data collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reveals the inadequacy of paid sick leave coverage: more than 59 million workers have no such leave. Even more—nearly 86 million—do not have paid sick leave to care for sick children.

This report reviews the most recently available data from a range of national and international sources on statutory requirements for paid leave and paid public holidays in 21 rich countries (16 European countries, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States). In addition to our finding that the United States is the only country in the group that does not require employers to provide paid leave, we also note that almost every other rich country has also established legal rights to paid public holidays over and above paid leave.

When Electrolux shut down the largest refrigerator factory in the country and moved it to Juarez, Mexico in search of cheaper labor, it turned the lives of many of the 3,000 employees who had worked there upside down. Cases of depression, alcoholism, and domestic abuse nearly tripled at the local hospital, and heart disease and mortality are predicted to rise. But when Electrolux shut down one of its Swedish plants it caused hardly a ripple. What kinds of policies can mitigate the negative health effects of job loss?

When Electrolux shut down the largest refrigerator factory in the country and moved it to Juarez, Mexico in search of cheaper labor, it turned the lives of many of the 3,000 employees who had worked there upside down. Cases of depression, alcoholism, and domestic abuse nearly tripled at the local hospital, and heart disease and mortality are predicted to rise. But when Electrolux shut down one of its Swedish plants it caused hardly a ripple. What kinds of policies can mitigate the negative health effects of job loss?

Americans now work more hours than the citizens any other country, including Japan. According to a poll by Take Back Your Time, 52 percent of working Americans received less than a week of paid vacation in the past year – more than half of those received none – while 65 percent of workers received less than two paid weeks off. Pushing for guaranteed paid vacation could have major positive impacts on the nation's mental and physical health.

The Partnership is an economic justice organization that works to ensure that public resources are invested in ways that are economically sound and provide a return to the community. They are working to reform development policy throughout the country so that the social and economic return on investment is tracked and reported to the public. The Partnership also seeks to secure a systematic and timely process for accomodating community input into development decisions.

De Graaf comments on the findings of a recent ILO report that U.S. workers produce per capita wealth than any other country and are second most productive per hour in the world, yet more people are working longer hours just to make ends meet. After presenting statistics on how badly we compare to European countries on quality of life indicators, he makes the case for a federal mandate of three weeks paid vacation per year.

Extensive research has shown that high demand-low control jobs are a recipe for chronic stress. Globalization and changes in the labor market over the past 30 years have resulted in a dramatic transformation in the nature and conditions of work – complicating our picture of the sources and types of stressors that workers face, as well as subsequent health outcomes and remedies.

This workbook is for community-based organizations seeking to affect the social determinants of health through community-based participatory approaches and nontraditional partnerships. Along with an introduction to the concepts of health equity, the workbook presents case studies of communities working at both small and large scales. The authors then provide guidelines for developing your own initiative, from creating partnerships to identifying your approach to assessing and maintaining your progress.

This memo offers recommendations for targeting Prevention and Wellness recovery funds to maximize the health and equity benefits in the Recovery Act of spring 2009. It makes the case that prioritizing disease prevention – particularly among the most impacted communities – is imperative to strengthening the nation. It makes specific recommendations for using funds to
- Build upon and leverage existing prevention initiatives;
- Promote equity by targeting America’s low-income communities and communities of color;
- Target multi-disciplinary strategies focused on environmental change;
- Develop the health workforce to effectively shape and implement prevention efforts; and
- Advance a vision of healthy people, healthy places.