Population Research Discovery Seminars
History as a Fundamental Cause of Disease
Amy Bailey, Sociology, University of Illinois at Chicago
Parrington Hall Room 360
To Join By Zoom: Register HERE
02/14/2025
12:30-1:30 PM PT
360 Parrington Hall
Co-Sponsor(s):
A number of public health and demographic theories point directly to the importance of past structures and experiences in explaining the health inequity patterns we observe today. The flexible resources Link and Phelan (1995) identify as the driving force behind fundamental causes – money, knowledge, power, prestige, and social connections – have been explicitly shaped by historical processes. Evidence suggests that the contemporary drivers of health and disease are systematically related to historical power relationships. In this paper, we advance history as a fundamental cause of disease. We argue that historical processes have shaped the contemporary patterns of inequitable access to power, social connections, prestige, economic assets, and knowledge, affecting risk of disease and the ability to protect individual and community health. We also identify the ways that historical processes have shaped multiple disease outcomes, multiple risk factors, access to flexible resources, and changes in intervening mechanisms. We believe that the residual trace of history may be viewed through three pathways: 1) Group-level segregation in social and economic spheres; 2) access to power, which shapes policy; and 3) psychological consequences of stigma. We illustrate with an extended example connecting historical white supremacist violence to contemporary pregnancy outcomes.
Amy Kate Bailey a sociologist, demographer, and epidemiologist whose research focuses on demographic approaches combining historical and contemporary sources of data and an interdisciplinary perspective. She earned an MPH in Epidemiology in 2024, and is a Double Dawg, earning a PhD and MA in Sociology at UW. Prof. Bailey is currently on faculty at the University of Illinois Chicago’s Department of Sociology, and a fellow of the Institute for Health Research and Policy. This year, she is a visiting scholar at CSDE. She serves as a Deputy Editor for Demography, and the Editorial Board for Social Science History. Her projects have been funded by NSF, NIH, and the USDA, in addition to multiple intramural sources. With colleagues, she has also constructed multiple data sets. Prof. Bailey’s work has been published in journals including the American Journal of Sociology, The American Sociological Review, Demography, Population Research and Policy Review, and the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Her 2015 book Lynched: The Victims of Southern Mob Violence, co-authored with Stewart E. Tolnay, received the 2016 PUMS Award from the Minnesota Population Center.