Alisa V. Moldavanova, associate professor and director of the Master of Public Administration program in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration and a senior faculty fellow at the Institute for Public Administration, recently served as the lead author on the journal article “What Does it Take to Have a Healthy Community? Exploring the Role of Social Infrastructure in Shaping Public Health.” Published in The American Review of Public Administration, this article addressed the ongoing decline of health in the United States while providing additional data to deepen the public’s understanding of the various factors that shape community health. The findings of this publication help to extend previous research that mainly focused on health care systems as a determinant of health outcomes. The article relies on the social determinants health framework, which argues for a more integrative and dynamic approach to public health. As an extension of that framework, Moldavanova, Dorothy M. Daley and John C. Pierce examined the connection between three pillars of social infrastructure (social capital, human capital and creative cultural capital) and community health, showing that each of these pillars have a positive impact on public health.  

Originally posted in UDaily's For the Record​​.​​​