Biological Pathways Linking the Social Environment, Development, and Health

This chapter begins by presenting an overview of current knowledge regarding the biological pathways by which socioeconomic, psychosocial, and developmental experiences affect human biology over the life course. The goal is to understand not only how systematic differences in health status emerge among groups of people whose life experiences differ from one another, but also how the variations are translated into differential risks of conditions such as coronary heart disease and Alzheimer's disease. The chapter then offers a conceptual framework for comprehensively integrating and accommodating the rapidly growing body of evidence on the biological pathways that contribute to this process, which the book has termed "biological embedding". Finally, the chapter identifies key research opportunities and challenges in furthering our understanding of this field.