Peer-reviewed article
A Scoping Review to Identify Community- and Societal-Level Strategies Evaluated from 2013 to 2023 for Their Potential Impact on Child Well-Being in the United States
Katie A. Ports, Whitney L. Rostad, Peter Coyne, Jadyn Dunning, Andrea E. Gonzalez et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This scoping review examined 341 studies published between 2013 and 2023 evaluating community and societal strategies in the United States that address social determinants of health and their impact on child well-being. The review categorized interventions across six domains: economic stability, education access and quality, food security, healthcare access and quality, neighborhood and built environment, and social and community context. The research found that many child-serving systems lack capacity to identify and implement upstream strategies, and this review synthesizes evidence to guide communities in selecting equitable solutions that support child thriving.
Key points
- 341 studies met inclusion criteria from 29,079 records screened using natural language processing
- Economic stability strategies were most frequently evaluated (n=94), followed by healthcare access (n=96) and food security (n=106)
- Education access and quality had 17 evaluated studies; neighborhood and built environment had only 7 studies
- The review documents both positive and negative impacts of population-level strategies on child well-being
- Communities and practitioners currently lack clear guidance on where to start or how to implement social determinant strategies
Limitations
This scoping review synthesizes the existence and distribution of evidence rather than conducting a systematic review with quality assessment, so it does not evaluate the strength or validity of individual studies. The review is limited to the United States context and does not provide detailed analysis of effect sizes, study quality, or mechanisms of change across the identified strategies.
Abstract
There is increased recognition for solutions that address the social determinants of health (SDOHs)-the context in which families are raising children. Unfortunately, implementing solutions that address inequities in the SDOHs has proven to be difficult. Many child and family serving systems and communities do not know where to start or do not have the capacity to identify and implement upstream SDOH strategies. As such, we conducted a scoping review to assess the status of evidence connecting strategies that address the SDOHs and child well-being. A total of 29,079 records were identified using natural language processing with 341 records meeting inclusion criteria (e.g., outcomes focused on child well-being, interventions happening at a population level, and evaluations of prevention strategies in the United States). Records were coded, and the findings are presented by the SDOH domain, such as strategies that addressed economic stability (n = 94), education access and quality (n = 17), food security (n = 106), healthcare access and quality (n = 96), neighborhood and built environment (n = 7), and social and community context (n = 12). This review provides an overview of the associations between population-level SDOH strategies and the impact-good and bad-on child well-being and may be a useful resource for communities and practitioners when considering equitable solutions that promote thriving childhoods.