On Social Capital and Healthy Communities - Part 1

Thanks to an invite to present at the Canadian Network for Asthma Care's bi-annual conference last weekend, I had the good fortune to hear an exceptional presentation by Dr. Paul McDonald on the relationship between social capital and health.  The takeaway messages were so significant that I am compelled to share them here.

What is social capital and who is Paul McDonald?  Read on.

Social capital, like sustainable development, is one of those terms that has attracted different shades of meaning depending on who is using it.  Here it speaks to the perceived level of social connection, and both interpersonal and civic trust that exists at an individual, group and community level.

Dr. McDonald is the director of the Population Health Research Group at the University of Waterloo.  While the focus of Dr. McDonald's work is on the development of interventions to improve population health and reduce chronic disease, his research has broad implications for how we organize our communities and economies.

The connection to asthma was the relatively recent recognition that a previously unrecognized risk factor - social capital - may be contributing to rising asthma rates.  The increases - Canada now has one of the highest asthma rates in the world  - could not be explained by traditional risk factors alone. To illustrate, a recent BC study showed that youth with asthma from a troubled neighbourhood are twice as likely to experience symptoms than those in a "good" neighbourhood.  Similar conclusions have been reached in comparable U.S. research studies.

Casting the social capital net a bit wider, an extensive U.S. study (Kawachi, 1997) found that lower levels of social trust were associated with higher rates of most causes of death, including coronary heart disease, malignant neoplasms, cerebrovascular disease, unintentional injury, and infant mortality.  The research findings would suggest that a 10% increase in the level of interpersonal trust would be associated with an approximately 9% lower level of overall mortality.

Next posting will look at the ways our social networks and connectedness influence our lives, and, in turn, our social capital and capacity to build stronger and more caring communities.