CYFC Scholars
Program
Elaine Hernandez
How
are Educational Disparities in Health Reproduced? A Study of
Women's Health Knowledge and Social Networks During Pregnancy
Abstract
Scholars in the social sciences and public health have long observed that
people with more money, knowledge, power, and prestige live
longer and healthier lives. These
socially advantaged people are better able to avoid newly identified
health risks when biomedical information emerges, and they
consistently make decisions that lead to longer and healthier
lives. In part,
this explains why inequalities in health persist, but no previous
research has examined the process by which these inequalities
are reproduced. My dissertation “How are Educational
Disparities in Health Reproduced? A
Study of Women’s Health Knowledge and Social Networks
During Pregnancy” posits
that, in addition to socioeconomic background, people acquire
new health information from their social networks—information
that influences their subsequent health behaviors. To
examine this process, my dissertation focuses on an empirical
example: women who are pregnant for the first time and must
navigate a plethora of new health information. Understanding
the ways in which these women obtain and act upon new health
information will not only advance our knowledge about the processes
that contribute to inequalities in health, it will also provide
insight into decisions about behaviors that lead to unequal
health among women and infants.
